Increasing Employee Motivation for Small Businesses

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Introduction

Highly motivated employees are often infectious to their colleagues because they represent a positive energy that encourages workers to optimize their potential. The benefits of having such workers in an organization are more pronounced if leaders represent this positive energy and allow the same to percolate down to their followers by encouraging their workers to achieve their individual and organizational goals (Yuan and Zhang, 2017). Different industries and organizations have unique characteristics that affect leadership effectiveness in this regard (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). However, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has dampened the resolve by some leaders and workers to remain positive amid concerns of employee safety and wellbeing. It has led to a paradigm shift in leadership and management, by requiring employees to look for innovative ways to motivate employees in this environment.

Given the effects of the pandemic on business operations and human resource practices, employee safety and wellbeing has been thrust to the forefront of leadership concerns because it has become increasingly poignant for leaders to take care of employee interests in the same manner they do for their key shareholders (Pieper et al., 2019). The pandemic has elicited fear and concern among some workers about the extent that their leaders would go to protect their interests, especially for at-risk workers who are most vulnerable due to frequent interactions with the public. Therefore, the nature of business operations has implications on the extent of concern that workers have towards their contribution to an organization. Relative to this assertion, the COVID-19 pandemic has created new leadership challenges for most companies because of the difficulty of maintaining high levels of motivation where fear and uncertainty characterize the workplace. This concern is especially poignant for small businesses that depend on effective leadership to succeed (Kim, Baik and Kim, 2019). Comparatively, large organizations, such as multinationals, have adequate resources to manage some of the challenges brought by the pandemic (Bouwmans et al., 2019). However, this is not true for small businesses because resource limitations, inadequate staff and minimal public trust affect their performance (Blom et al., 2020). This research proposal seeks to find out ways to increase employee motivation for small businesses in a post-pandemic world.

Research Aim

To find out strategies for increasing employee motivation in a post-pandemic world

Research Objectives

To identify effective leadership styles best suited for increasing employee motivation among small businesses
To find out which reward system is appropriate for increasing employee motivation among small businesses in a post-pandemic world
To establish how to create an environment where employees feel motivated and engaged to work
To determine how to create a balance between the realization of employee welfare goals and organizational objectives among small businesses in a post-pandemic world

Research Questions

Which leadership style is best suited for increasing employee motivation among small businesses in a post-pandemic world?
Which reward system is appropriate to increase employee motivation among small businesses in a post-pandemic world?
How would leaders create an environment where employees feel motivated and engaged in a post-pandemic business environment?
How do leaders create a balance between the realization of employee welfare goals and organizational objectives among small businesses in a post-pandemic world?

Justification of Study

Creating a connection between employee welfare and an organization’s goals is a critical part of leadership effectiveness. The COVID-19 pandemic has disconnected these two aspects of management by elevating the importance of employee interests in business operations. Consequently, managers have to grapple with the challenge of balancing the interests of their shareholders as well as those of their employees (Vidal et al., 2017). The challenge has been magnified for many small business owners who lack the resources for achieving this balance (Williams and Preston, 2018). Furthermore, the uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic has made it untenable to continue with business as usual.

This analysis means that new ways have to be devised to enhance employee motivation in a post-pandemic world. In other words, businesses have to look for innovative ways of reassuring workers that their safety is paramount and that management will cater for their interests, even as they continue to pursue their profit-making objectives (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). The current study aims to seek innovative ways of motivating employees in a small business setting by balancing the interests of employees as well as those of the organizations they serve.

Limitations of Study

This research proposal is limited to the locus of study, which are small business operations. As highlighted in this document, these businesses are mostly resource-strapped and operate within a small geographical market (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). They may lack the technical skills and expertise of balancing the interests of their shareholders and unlike large organizations, may also lack the accountability needed to develop sustainable solutions for managing the effects of the pandemic once it is over (Kim, Baik and Kim, 2019). These small businesses are also mostly privately owned and, as such, run the risk of failing to meet best practices of performance in the area of human resource management (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). Therefore, the proposed research is limited to businesses that have these characteristics and the findings are confined to the post-pandemic business environment where employee interests are at the forefront of leadership practices.

Another limitation of the proposed study is the indicative nature of the findings. In other words, the views highlighted in the presentation are not representative of small businesses in general but rather a sample of them (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). Stated differently, the findings that will be presented in the discussions are obtained from one organization, where the researcher works, and this firm does not represent human resource practices of employees in totality. Therefore, this statement highlights the extent that these findings can be used to explain leadership practices that would increase employee motivation in a small business setting.

Relevant Theme and Discipline

The proposed study will focus on leadership as the relevant theme. Leadership refers to the influence that a person or a group of people have on others (Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). This aspect of employee management is selected for the study because of its undue influence on employee motivation. Indeed, a host of scholarly research has identified the link between leadership and employee motivation (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). Therefore, understanding how to lead teams in an organization is an effective way of motivating employees (Williams and Preston, 2018). Based on this relationship, the proposed study will seek to establish how leadership could be used to increase employee motivation among small businesses in a post-pandemic world.

Initial Theoretical Research

Leadership is an effective tool for increasing employee motivation. There are several theories attributed to this aspect of management, including the transactional, behavioural, and trait theories (Williams and Preston, 2018). These models of leadership are primarily focused on identifying good leadership practices and the environment through which they thrive. However, for purposes of the current research proposal, the transformational theory of leadership is proposed as the main theoretical foundation for review. It focuses on the nature of the relationship between leaders and their followers by instilling good leadership practices that foster understanding and good relations between both parties.

This transformational leadership theory is focused on understanding motivational and inspirational attributes of leadership that foster peace and understanding between leaders and their subjects. In other words, the transformational leadership practice strives to inspire teams through passion and enthusiasm (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). Leaders who practice this style are often model employees to their followers and subscribe to the same standard of performance as their subjects (Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). Therefore, there are minimal differences between the conduct of a leader and their followers. Based on this background, several scholars have argued for the use of this leadership style in their organizations (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2016; Wu, Peng and Estay, 2018). However, they have had varied levels of success due to differences in leadership styles. From this background, six journals will be relevant to the proposed study, as highlighted below.

A journal article by Farahnak et al. (2020) explored the role of transformational leadership in effecting change management within an organization. It was reported that attitudes towards change and transformational leadership were important determinants of leadership effectiveness especially when leaders needed to develop innovative strategies of addressing organizational challenges (Farahnak et al., 2020). The researchers established that there is a positive relationship between staff attitudes and implementation success in a corporate setting (Farahnak et al., 2020). The findings also suggested that leadership behaviours were more critical to the implementation of successful policies more than the level of innovation achieved. This journal article is relevant to the prosed study because it defines the extent that transformational leadership can create changes within an organization. Its analysis is critical in determining effective ways of addressing new challenges affecting the workplace environment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as factors that are critical to the success of motivating employees in a post-pandemic world.
A journal article authored by Weller et al. (2020) also alludes to the important role of transformational leadership in influencing employee actions. It suggests that this leadership approach fosters unity among employees (Weller et al., 2020). The researchers also affirmed the link between transformational leadership and employee attitudes with the latter being proposed as one of the most effective ways of implementing leadership changes in an organization (Weller et al., 2020). This journal article is relevant to the proposed study because it highlights circumstances through which leadership effectiveness can be realized in an organization.
A different journal article highlights the role that leadership plays in strengthening employee affective commitment to their organizations. Authored by Peng, Liao and Sun (2020), it suggests that the relationship between the two concepts is moderated by the perception that employees have towards the impact of their work in an organization. The authors also opined that the perception that workers have on the impact of their contributions to an organization was influenced by an organization’s level of centralization (Peng, Liao and Sun, 2020). This article is relevant to the proposed study because it highlights the role that organization-specific factors have on leadership effectiveness. It is relevant in understanding factors that are unique to small businesses that affect leadership and employee performance.
While the article above highlights the role of organization-specific factors in implementing change within an organization setting, other researchers have investigated the role of employee-specific factors in realizing the same objective. For example, an article authored by Groves (2020) explored the role of employee openness in implementing change within an organization and established that resistance to change was influenced by employee-specific factors. Transformational leadership was mentioned to play a moderating role in understanding the effects that employee-specific factor would have on an organization’s willingness to adopt changes (Groves, 2020). The findings of this article are relevant to the proposed research because they highlight the role that transformational leadership would have on employee-specific factors responsible for resisting or adopting leadership styles.
The role of transformational leadership in motivating employees has also been explored within the context that such leadership practices instil a sense of motivation in employee input. For example, the article by Pradhan and Jena (2019) suggests that transformational leadership is useful in breaking monotony of work, thereby making employees more interested in their contributions to an organization. The findings of this journal article are useful in understanding the role that leadership plays in promoting innovative work behaviours.
The role played by transformational leadership in fostering innovation has also been a critical tropic of discussion in academic texts. Relative to this statement, Li, Mitchell and Boyle (2016) say that transformational leadership is critical in fostering team innovation but has a negative effect in promoting individual innovation. This article is relevant to the proposed research because it highlights the limits of transformational leadership in looking for innovative solutions to promote team, as opposed to individual motivation.

Types of Data Employed

The proposed research will integrate both primary and secondary data in the review process. Primary data will come from interviews that will be administered in the researcher’s organization. The researcher intends to interview 13 people who work in various positions of leadership within the organization. This number is appropriate for the analysis because it is consistent with the views of Namey (2017), which suggest that a minimum of 12 respondents is adequate to undertake a comprehensive interview process. The respondents will be sampled using the simple random technique to avoid bias in research (Bryman, 2017). Secondary research will come from credible sources of published data, including books and journals. The two sources of information will be used in the research to bolster the strength of the findings because primary data will be used to explain secondary data, while the latter will be used to provide the context of discussion for the proposed study.

Method of Data Collection

As highlighted above, primary data will be obtained using questionnaires that will be administered to employees working in the same organization as the researcher. The interviews will be semi-structured to provide standardized responses. Interviews are chosen as the most appropriate data collection technique because they can collect reliable data from a small sample of respondents (Patten and Newhart, 2017). Furthermore, given that small businesses have few employees, it would not be appropriate to undertake a survey because they are associated with the collection of data from a large group of respondents.

Secondary data will be obtained from credible websites, industry reports, and government publications. Additional information will be obtained from peer-reviewed journals and books because they are reliable sources of data in academic research. The secondary data used in the research will be obtained with permission from the authors, as recommended by Ballin (2020). Alternatively, when this permission is unavailable, only information from freely available materials will be used.

The sources of information obtained from the research will be used with acknowledgment of the authors that developed them. In other words, the researcher will give credit to the original authors of the materials. This provision aligns with the recommendations of Bell et al. (2018) and Temple (2019), which highlight it as one of the ways of dealing with the ethical concerns of secondary data. The sources of information to be obtained in this manner will be published materials from the last five years. Stated differently, the researcher will only include data from materials that have been published from the year 2016 to 2021. The goal is to make sure that the researcher obtains the most updated data relating to leadership practices in the small business setting.

Preliminary Hypothesis

Given that the proposed research is qualitative in nature, there will be no hypothesis developed to support the findings.

Data Analysis

The thematic and coding method will be used to analyse the qualitative findings to be gathered from the respondents. This technique works by identifying recurring themes from a set of responses (Stokes, 2017; Sekaran and Bougie, 2016). The themes are then coded using a numerical indicator such as “1” or “2” for ease of data analysis. These codes are later used to represent one aspect of the analysis, after which the researcher will collectively merge them to produce a holistic set of findings for review. Broadly, the thematic and coding method will be implemented in six stages, as defined by Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2019), with the first one being the familiarization of data. In this stage of the analysis, the researcher will review the overall set of findings derived from the investigation without attributing the data to any particular research issue. This action will be left to the second stage of the data analysis process, which is the allocation of codes to the relevant themes.

These codes will be used for reference purposes and they will represent each research issue under investigation. In other words, each code will be used to collect data that is relevant to each of the research questions investigated. The third stage of the data analysis method will involve the generation of themes that will emerge from the data collected. These themes will be associated with each of the four research questions underpinning the investigation. Therefore, they will be used to answer various aspects of the research topic. The fourth step of the data analysis process will involve a review of the themes to establish their synchronicity with the research objectives (Kumar, 2018). This action will later lead to the fifth stage of data analysis, which is defining and naming themes.

As alluded above, the themes will be defined by their contribution towards the realization of the research objectives. This analysis will further be coupled with the need to relate the objectives with the research questions underpinning the study. The last stage of the data analysis process will involve the final write-up of the research findings. In this stage of the data analysis, the themes identified will be merged to create a holistic narrative of the research findings. The aim of the research is expected to be completed in this stage of the review.

Directions for Further Research

The findings obtained from the proposed research are expected to sample the views of a few respondents involved in leadership. Future research could involve the use of a large sample of respondents using questionnaires and other data collection instruments for mass collection of data. Therefore, the findings to be derived from the current investigation will only be indicative of strategies involved in improving employee motivation in a post-pandemic world. Overall, the timeline for undertaking the current study is depicted in the Gantt chart below.

Activity	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9
Contacting Respondents
Data Collection
Data Synthesis
Formulation of the final report
Confirmation with respondents (Member-check technique)
Presentation of findings

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