Predictors of Employee Motivation in a Pharmaceutical Company

The researcher sought to find out the predictors of employee motivation in the Taro Pharmaceutical Company. The research design for this study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey with a close ended questionnaire which was used to provide answers to the research questions. The independent variable in the study is HR Strategies and the dependent variable in the study is employee motivation. The study employed Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 to analyze the data gathered on the basis of descriptive statistics such as Mean and Standard deviation and inferential statistics thus, Pearson correlation and regression and the result was discussed. Systematic and proportionate sampling techniques were used in selecting 242 respondents. 215 questionnaires were retrieved and used for the analysis. To test hypotheses H1-H2, bivariate regression analyses was carried out. Also, Pearson correlation was done to find out the existing relationship between HR Strategies and employee motivation. HR Strategies was significantly related to employee motivation. in the simple regression analysis, all the dimensions of HR Strategies significantly impacted employee motivation with communication being the highest predictor of motivation. The results revealed that, at the Taro Pharmaceutical Company, HR Strategies include communication, reward and recognition, work systems, staffing and training and development. The results proved that; all the dimensions of HR Strategies were significantly related to employee motivation which shows that employees were highly motivated. staffing and training and development followed with reward and recognition as well as work system. The highest of the challenges is non-regularization of a general staff meeting. Also, the absence of lucrative incentives was a major challenge to the employees. Inadequate change within work unit was also key. Even though employees were motivated generally, Low comprehension of company strategy and poor coordination amongst management was evident in the results of the analysis. Based on the findings, the researcher recommends that, Management should consider regularizing general meetings with the entire staff. meeting ways of presenting their grievances. Management should also consider incentivizing lower ranked employees and other employees who fall outside the top management bracket. It is research based and healthy for employees to be incentivized intermittently.


Introduction
HR strategies set out what the organization intends to do about its human resource management policies and practices and how they should be integrated with the business strategy and each other. They are described by Dyer and Reeves (1995) as 'internally consistent bundles of human resource practices. Richardson and Thompson (1999) suggest that: A strategy, whether it is an HR strategy or any other kind of management strategy must have two key elements: there must be strategic objectives (ie things the strategy is supposed to achieve), and there must be a plan of action (ie the means by which it is proposed that the objectives will be met).
The purpose of HR strategies is to articulate what an organization intends to do about its human resource management policies and practices now and in the longer term, bearing in mind the dictum of Fombrun et al (1984) that business and managers should perform well in the present to succeed in the future. HR strategies aim to meet both business and human needs in the organization. Studies on motivation depicts that there are several ways to motivate employees. These are known as theories, which can be divided into two categories. They are the content theories and the process theories. The content theory focuses on what motivates employees and it was propounded by eminent writers such as Maslow (1946), Mcclelland (1988) and Hertzberg (1968). Vroom (1969), Adams (1965), Locke and Lathan (1990) are the proponents of the process theories. The foregoing begs the following questions: What are the prevailing HR Strategies existing in the Taro Pharmaceutical Company? What is the impact of HR Strategies on employee motivation in the Taro Pharmaceutical Company? There are several ways in which this study will be of importance and add to collective research literature.
Conceptual framework depicts a systematic way of organizing a particular project, study, research or activity (Mugenda & Mugenda, 2006). It involves providing an understanding of the various features of the activity. According to Mittal, et al., (2010), a framework offers an explanation of why a particular activity or research is being undertaken in a particular way. It again aids in the application of ideas of others and in particular a framework can help us to explain why we are doing a project in a particular way. A framework exemplifies a map which gives direction as regards the roads, and other routes that allows passengers to go to a particular place (Mugenda & Mugenda, 2006).
From the extant literature, the researcher identified a couple of HR Strategies which are applied in this study. These are staffing, Training, Rewards and Recognition, Work systems, communication and employee relation. The researcher therefore has come out with the conceptual framework which is illustrated below.
Human resource strategy is identified as the independent variable and employee motivation as the dependent variable. HR strategies has been attributed six (6) dimensions. These dimensions independently influence the employee. Such an influence on the employee motivation could ultimately lead to whether the employee is highly motivated, moderately motivated or not motivated. It is expected that, by the interrelation of these variables, the researcher will be able to conclusively identify what impact HR strategy at the Taro Pharmaceutical company has had on the employees. 3.0 Theoretical Framework of the Study A lot of theories have been propounded to examine the factors that contribute to employee motivation in organizations. These theories are important because they provide explanations to the reasons why employees are motivated, therefore, if properly looked at, could lead to having better motivated employees which ultimately may lead to increased productivity in organizations (McCullagh, 2005).

Herzberg and Maslow
Herzberg (1959) introduced a well-known motivation theory, which is the two-Factor Theory, he described in his theory between motivators and hygiene factors. He emphasized that the factors can either be motivators or hygiene factors, but can never be both at the same time. Intrinsic motivational factors are challenging work, recognition and responsibilities. Hygiene motivators are extrinsic motivational factors such as status, job security and salary. Motivating factors can, when present, leads to satisfaction and Hygiene factors can, when not present leads to dissatisfaction, but the two factors can never be treated as opposites from each other (Saiyadain 2009, 158).

Process Theory
The emphasis in process theory is on the psychological processes or forces that affect motivation, as well as basic needs (Armstrong, 2010). The process theory is also known as cognitive theory because it is concerned with people's perceptions of their working environment and the ways in which they interpret and understand it (Armstrong, 2010).
According to Armstrong (2010), process theory provides a much more relevant approach to motivation.  Vol.13, No.3, 2021 98 Central to the process theory is a series of cognitive theories that attempt to understand the thought processes that people have when determining how to behave in the workplace (Steers & Shapiro, 2004). One of the known cognitive theories is the expectancy theory presented by Victor Vroom as the first systematic formulation of the theory (Steers & Shapiro, 2004). Following Vroom's expectancy theory are other process theories such as the goal achievement theory and equity theory.

Expectancy Theory
In Spector (2000), expectancy theory explains how rewards lead to behavior by focusing on internal cognitive states that lead to motivation. According to Daft (2003, in Dartey-Baah, 2010, expectancy theory proposes that motivation depends on the individuals' expectations or outlook about their ability to perform tasks and receive desired rewards. The theory was originally contained in the valency-instrumentality-expectancy (VIE) theory which was formulated by Vroom (1964( , in Green, 2000. Valency stands for value; instrumentality is the belief that if one thing is done, it leads to another, and expectancy is the probability that action or effort will lead to an outcome (Vroom, 1964). The theory assumes that people think about what they are doing, what they are getting and its worth (Armstrong, 2010). Vroom's expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964) developed the topic of motivation combining the interaction of individual needs and employees working together. The concept of expectancy theory was defined in more detail by Vroom (1964) as follows: When an individual chooses between alternatives which involve uncertain outcomes, it seems clear that this behaviour is affected not only by his preferences among these outcomes but also by the degree of to which he believes these outcomes to be possible. Expectancy is defined as a momentary belief concerning the likelihood that a particular act will be followed by a particular outcome. Expectancies may be described in terms of their strength. Maximal strength is indicated by subjective certainty that the act will be followed by the outcome, while minimal (or zero) strength is indicated by subjective certainty that will not be followed by the outcome. The strength of expectations may be based on past experiences (reinforcement), but individuals are frequently with new situations -a change in job, payment system, or working conditions imposed by management -where past experience is not an adequate guide to the implications of the change. In these circumstances, motivation may be reduced (Armstrong, 2010).

Methods
The research design for this study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey with a close ended questionnaire which was used to provide answers to the research questions. The independent variable in the study is HR Strategies and the dependent variable in the study is employee motivation.
This study employed a quantitative research design to investigate the relationship existing between the various human resource strategies and employees' motivation and also to find out the impact human resource strategies have on employee's motivation. The empirical analysis for the study aimed at finding out the relationship between human resource strategy and employees' motivation in the Taro company Ltd in Canada.
The study employed Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 to analyze the data gathered on the basis of descriptive statistics such as Mean and Standard deviation and inferential statistics thus, Pearson correlation and the result was discussed. Two hundred and forty-two (242) senior staff members including supervisors and managers participated in the research. Persons each drawn from the respective levels (senior management, middle level management, lower level and supervisory level management were involved in the exercise. Since the population at the Taro Company is a finite population, the researcher used the systematic sampling technique and proportionate which is a probability sampling method. With this method, list of the various level of employees was sourced from the HR department and numbers sequentially drawn from one to the last person according to each level.
The expected sample size was 242 and simple random sampling was used to select the required number to partake in the research activity. Proportionate sampling technique was used to give equal representation to the various level of employees.
The researcher consulted the HR department for the nominal roll of staff. The total number of staff are 661. The researcher collected the nominal roll of the different levels of employee and calculated for the sampling interval. The formular for sampling interval is given by the entire population over desired sample size. 661/242 = 2.73. Rounding it to a whole figure, the sampling interval is 3.0. This means that, taking the nominal roll of each level of management, every 3 rd person on the list counting from the start point was administered the questionnaire. The researcher made frantic efforts to involve all the staff who were selected using the systematic sampling technique until the last respondent was administered with the questionnaire. The 242 sample is backed by the Krejcie & Morgan, (1970) sampling distribution according to sizes of population. In this instance, the population is 661. According the chart, 661 should have a sample of 242 to make the sample scientific. Find below the chart.

Descriptive Characteristics of Respondents
Descriptive Statistics of the Respondents The main objective of descriptive analysis is to understand the profile of the respondents. Table 1.1 shows a summary of the descriptive analysis. From Table 1.1, the preponderance of the respondents aged between 26-31 (51.6%). This was followed by the age range from 20-25 (20.9%). The least represented age group is 44 years and above (4.2%). Majority of the gender were males (79.1%) with females recording 20.9%. On the educational background of employees, preponderance was tertiary level (54.9%). Few were unlettered and had no formal education (1.4%). 35.3% of the respondents were secondary or Middle School Living Certificates earners. On the religious background of the respondents, 72.6% of the employees were Christians. Islam followed with 16.3% . Budhists (7.4%) and Traditionalist (3.7%). The religious picture shows that, there is variety in terms of employee religious affiliations. Duration of their working experience was explored by the researcher. Most (39.5%) of the respondents had worked for between 1-5 years. They were followed by those who had worked for 6-11 years (35.3%). Those who had worked from 12-17 years represented 23.3% with the least represented being those who had worked for 18 years and above (1.9%). In assessing whether the data of this study were normally distributed, kurtosis and skewness index were employed for each variable. According to Kline (2005), absolute values of skewness index less than 3 and the kurtosis index below 10 suggest that the data is normally distributed. As indicated in Table 4.2, the skewness and kurtosis indexes exposed that all the variables were normally distributed with the skewness and kurtosis absolute values ranging from 0.44 to 1.88, and 0.07 to 3.55 respectively. Finally, reliability analysis was conducted to find European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online) Vol.13, No.3, 2021 100 out the internal consistency of each of the measuring instrument of the variables under investigation. It was revealed that all the variables have satisfactory Cronbach's alpha. As Nunnally and Bernstein (1994) suggested, the Cronbach's alpha should be greater than or equal to .70 before the instrument can be deemed reliable. As presented in Table 1.2, the Cronbach's alpha of the study ranged from 0.94 to 0.96 which indicates that the instruments were reliable.

HR Strategies
The table 1.3 shows the mean score and standard deviation of human resource strategies implemented in Taro Pharmaceutical Company. This was necessary to unravel the opinions of management on one hand, and employees, on another hand as regards the availability and attractiveness of human resource strategies in the said company.
When it comes to communication as a dimension of human resource strategies, most of the management of Taro company strongly agree that communication flows very well in the company with the mean score of 4.73 whereas most of the employees also agree that communication is good in the company with the mean score of 3.90. The views shared by these two different groups suggest that communication flows very well in Taro Pharmaceutical Company but management is more convinced than employees as shown in the table 1.3. With regards to training and development as another dimension of human resource strategies, management of Taro Pharmaceutical Company is in very strong agreement that the company has attractive training and development opportunities for its employees with the mean score standing at 4.6 meanwhile most of the employees agree that the company offers them training and development opportunities. Here, it was seen that management shared relatively stronger view than employees.
Again, concerning how the company rewards and recognize the effort of its staff, management agree that the company indeed has attractive compensation and reward practices for its workers with the mean score of 4.10. Employees, on the other hand, posit that the company rewards and recognizes their effort handsomely even though few of them were not sure as to whether the company rewards and recognition packages is attractive or not. Again, it could be seen that management held a stronger view on this than employees. Moreover, management of Taro Pharmaceutical Company is of the opinion that the work system within the company is smooth with the mean of 4.47. This means that most of the management members agree that the company has a smooth work system and only few strongly agree that the work system prevailing in the company is good. In a similar direction, most of the employees of the company agree that work system is smooth but few of them were uncertain with the mean of 3.83.
Finally, pertaining to staffing as a dimension of human resource strategies, all of the management members strongly agreed that the company has good staffing procedures for its recruitment and selection with the mean of 5.00. Meanwhile, most of the employees of the company only agreed that the staffing processes and procedures of the company is good but only few of them were not sure as to whether the staffing procedures and processes were good or not with the mean of 3.83.
It can therefore be concluded that, comparatively, management of Taro Pharmaceutical Company at all times shared relatively stronger views concerning the availability and attractiveness of human resource strategies than employees. Nevertheless, employees took a similar stance with management on the issues of human resource strategies existing in the Taro Pharmaceutical Company. The researcher did not find employee relations as was proposed from literature in the conceptual framework. The applicable HR Strategies were limited to communication, training and development, reward and recognition, staffing and work systems.

Regression Analysis
A simple linear regression analysis was further used to determine whether human resource strategies will predict employee motivation. Table 4.5 gives a summary of the simple regression analysis. H2: HR Strategies will significantly impact employee motivation. Pearson simple regression analysis was conducted to predict employee motivation based on Human resource European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905(Paper) ISSN 2222-2839(Online) Vol.13, No.3, 2021 strategies. Results of the regression analysis as shown in Table 4.5 reveals that human resource strategies (communication, training and development, reward and recognition, work system, and staffing) is a positive and significant predictor of employee motivation (β = .924, p < .01) in the Taro Pharmaceutical Company. Additionally, human resource strategies accounted for 85.4% of the variation in employee motivation. However, all the dimensions of human resource strategies were seen to significantly impact employee motivation with communication being the highest predictor (β = .901, p < .01and R 2 =.812), followed by staffing (β = .880, p < .01 and R 2 =.775), training and development (β = .827, p < .01 and R 2 =.683), reward and recognition, (β = .827, p < .01 and R 2 =.683) and work system (β = .662, p < .01and R 2 =.438). Therefore, the hypothesis 2 was confirmed by the regression analysis. The result of the regression analysis means that as human resource strategies of Taro Pharmaceutical Company improves the more likely it is to augment higher levels of motivation among its employees. Note: N = 215; p < .01. DV is employee motivation. Predictors are communication, training and development, reward and recognition, work system, staffing and human resource strategy.
6.0 Discussion of Findings 6.1 Discussion of Objective One The first objective of the study sought to identify the HR Strategies existing in the Taro pharmaceutical company. The results revealed that, at the Taro Pharmaceutical Company, HR Strategies include communication, reward and recognition, work systems, staffing and training and development. The responses from both management and employees were evident. most of the management of Taro company strongly agree that communication flows very well in the company whereas most of the employees also agree that communication is good in the company. The views shared by these two different groups suggest that communication flows very well in Taro Pharmaceutical Company but management is more convinced than employees. With regards to training and development as another dimension of human resource strategies, management of Taro Pharmaceutical Company is in very strong agreement that the company has attractive training and development opportunities for its employees. Meanwhile most of the employees agree that the company offers them training and development opportunities. Here, it was seen that management shared relatively stronger view than employees.
Again, concerning how the company rewards and recognize the effort of its staff, management agree that the company indeed has attractive compensation and reward practices for its workers. Employees, on the other hand, posit that the company rewards and recognizes their effort handsomely even though few of them were not sure as to whether the company rewards and recognition packages is attractive or not. Again, it could be seen that management held a stronger view on this than employees. Moreover, management of Taro Pharmaceutical Company is of the opinion that the work system within the company is smooth. This means that most of the management members agree that the company has a smooth work system and only few strongly agree that the work system prevailing in the company is good. In a similar direction, most of the employees of the company agree that work system is smooth but few of them were uncertain.
Finally, pertaining to staffing as a dimension of human resource strategies, all of the management members strongly agreed that the company has good staffing procedures for its recruitment and selection. Meanwhile, most of the employees of the company only agreed that the staffing processes and procedures of the company is good but only few of them were not sure as to whether the staffing procedures and processes were good or not.
It can therefore be seen that, comparatively, management of Taro Pharmaceutical Company mostly shared stronger views concerning the availability and attractiveness of human resource strategies than employees. Nevertheless, employees took a similar stance with management on the issues of human resource strategies existing in the Taro Pharmaceutical Company. The researcher did not find employee relations as was proposed

Conclusion
In relation to the main findings outlined, the following conclusions were drawn. The main HR Strategies at the Taro Pharmaceutical Company, include communication, reward and recognition, work systems, staffing and training and development. It was established from the results that, communication is the highest predictor of employee motivation. staffing and training and development followed with reward and recognition as well as work system. The main challenge to HR Strategies is non-regularization of a general staff meeting. Also, the absence of lucrative incentives was a major challenge to the employees. Inadequate change within work unit was also key. Even though employees were motivated generally, Low comprehension of company strategy and poor coordination amongst management was evident in the results of the analysis.

Recommendation
Based on the findings, the researcher recommends that, Management should consider regularizing general meetings with the entire staff. Certain concerns of low-profile staff may be better understood at a general meeting even though there are structured ways of presenting their grievances.
Management should also consider incentivizing lower ranked employees and other employees who fall outside the top management bracket. It is research based and healthy for employees to be incentivized intermittently.
Again, the study proffers that, introduction of some level of dynamism should be introduced to various units to allow for changes in roles and responsibilities. Internal arrangements are thus laudable to remove boredom in the system.
The researcher submits that, intensification of communication as a strategy of HR is helpful in achieving the goals of the company. Since most of the employees were happy about the communication strategy, management should intensify this strategy to allow a directional and goal-oriented crop of employees.
The researcher recommends that, even though the identified HR Strategies were functioning well, not all the dimensions were able to score high rating as some of the employees were unsure of the applicable strategies. Hence, management should intensify the existing strategies to help achieve organizational goals.