ABSTRACT

The introduction of universal banking law has brought changes over the years, with it stiff competition in the banking industry. Commercial banks are no exception to the modern changes in ensuring staff motivation towards their organisational goals. The study seeks to assess the motivational packages available at First Bank and how it affects employee performance towards the Bank‟s cor was used for the study. The study revealed that, management can make use of different strategies and policies to motivate employees in the banking environment. Employees are interested in enhanced salaries, fringed benefits, promotion, and car loans as motivating elements sufficient to push employees of the bank to give out their best. The research also revealed that the core duty of the bank is normally carried out by clericals who are more than the supervisors and as such motivational packages should be geared towards the clerical workers to ensure that they delight the customers. Promotion has been a worry to most staff; measures should be put in place by management to ensure that there is continuity in the promotion of staff to avoid low productivity in terms of deposit mobilisation. The study revealed that if management withdrew motivational packages it will have serious repercussions on employees‟ performance. T performance and corporate performance since performance indicators in terms of deposits, loan recovery, profitability and also ensuring the liquidity of the banks. The conduciveness of the office environment has first time impression on the customers and the welfare of the employees. Management can develop new theories such as equity, macllend theory, Abraham Maslow and Hertzberg two factors to ensure employees achieve work targets.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

The commercial banks play important roles in worldwide economies and their employees are the best sources of delivering good services to their customers. Excellent services provided and offered by employees can create a positive perception and ever lasting image in the eyes of banks‟ customersmotivationofabank.‟semployeeThe plays a major role in achieving high level of satisfaction among its customers (Petcharak, 2004).

The financial services industry is one of the most competitive and highly globalised sectors due largely to the extensive use of information technology systems by firms operating in the sector. Despite the fact that information technology has become the bedrock of all companies in the financial sector at the global level, human capital still remains the driving force in the highly digital financial services industry, because not all the functions performed by financial institutions can be undertaken solely by electronic devices such as automated teller machines (ATM), computers or other similar devices. Where even electronic devices can, the organization still requires human beings to operate them.

Ombati et al. (2010), stated that services, by definition, are intangible and can be divided into high-touch or high-tech services-touchservices. are“Highmostlydependent on people in the service process producing the service, whereas high-tech services are predominantly based on the use of automated systems, information technology and other types of physical resources. For example, high-tech services include Internet/Telephone/Short Messaging Service (SMS),

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ATMs whereas high-touch services consist of instructions and personnel assistance in using the services”.

Even with the provision of these high-tech services by electronic devices, some amount of human effort is required to service and monitor the equipment used in the process of delivering the service. Therefore, financial institutions still need to recruit and retain some level of qualified and self motivated staff in order to be competitive in the current globalised and turbulent financial services industry.

In case of using human beings to provide services, it is not enough to merely rely on the number of people engaged, their qualification and experience or their ability but remunerating them appropriately is also of paramount importance. The personnel engaged must be motivated in order to get the best output from them. Many captains of industries believe that the key to improve staff performance and productivity in any area is motivation rather than ability. Bateman and Snell (1996), contend that motivation is the force that

energizes, direct and sustainsmentof aagoalperson‟s.Ahighly e motivated person will work hard towards the achievement of organizational goal, given the ability and adequate understanding of the management is to administer motivational programmes which will encourage employees to

improve their work performance and productivity. To this end modern day managers of companies in the financial services industries are therefore adopting various kind of motivational packages not only to retain employees but also help them to achieve competitive advantage in the market.

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1.2 Statement of the problem

The banking industry had grown in numbers with a lot of multi-national banks opening more branches in Nigeria. Since the enactment of these Acts, the banking industry in Nigeria had both increased in numbers and capital based. The liberalization of the banking industry has therefore engendered fierce competition in the sector.

According to Michael Porters five forces strategy model, free entry and exit of new firms into a competitive industry or market comes with its associated opportunities and treats. Therefore the liberation of the banking industry comes with it opportunities and treats to existing banks including FIRST BANK PLC. The level of motivations to determine whether the employees of FIRST BANK PLC are well motivated to stay in the bank or are leaving the bank and joining the new banks is of greater concern.

This element of easy entry and exit of new firms, as in Michael Porters Model, brings some challenges to the exiting banks in the Nigerian banking industry. These challenges can be categorized into operational and human resource.

1.      Operational Challenges–These are associated with products innovation, waiver of some restrictive policies on some service deliveries, customers oriented banking rather than task oriented, liberal lending processes or fast tracking of loans/advance disbursement, improved technological system, reduction in the profitability and new promotional strategy, increased internal rivalry/competition among the banks, and loss of customers and deposits leading to unstable liquidity of the banks.

2.      Human Resource challenges- Threats in these areas include: volatile loyalty and commitment, potential defective morale, e

packages and increase in the cost of recruitment and placing.

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Any of these can affect the performance of the banks in the banking industry. The likelihood of potential and experience staff moving from existing banks to these new banks is a source of worry because they need to be replaced at a higher cost to fill the gap. Alternatively, the residual staff would have to be appropriately remunerated to work extra hard to sustain the service demand on their bank.

The concerns this research addresses are the various motivations that can push employees of a human resource challenged bank to out-perform and raise the service delivery standard of their bank. In other words, how can FIRST BANK PLC push the existing employees so that performance targets can be achieved? These issues have necessitated the study to assess the effect of

motivational packages on employees‟ performa