Reward preferences and work orientations among South African employees

Abstract: Background: Ascertaining what motivates and satisfies employees is a complex yet critical task. After all, employees have a need to feel valued in the workplace. Although managers and behavioural practitioners draw on rewards to acknowledge employee efforts, they often lack insight into which rewards are most appealing to individual employees. Given this, there are not only limited instruments available to measure reward preferences but ease of access to psychometrically sound measures is further challenging (Hoole & Hotz, 2016; Victor & Hoole, 2017). Furthermore, there is a dearth of empirical work attributed to understanding what drives reward preferences in the new world of work. One particular gap in research is the need to explore how people’s relations to their work shape preferences for rewards. While job-orientated people have a need to satisfy their lives away from the workplace, careerorientated people have a strong need to achieve and advance in their jobs. Calling-orientated people seek meaning and fulfilment through their work. By scrutinising how individuals relate to their work, it is possible that managers and behavioural practitioners can draw closer to pinpointing what employees seek from the work that they do. Research purpose: The overarching aim of this study was to explore reward preferences and work orientations among South African workers. The objectives of this study were achieved by following a three-phase process. The specific objectives of Phase 1 were to explore how employees feel rewarded in the workplace and thereafter to develop a model depicting how rewards can be categorised. The objective of Phase 2 was to develop and validate a new reward preference instrument in the South African context (the Rewards Desirability Inventory). The objective of Phase 3 was to determine whether work orientations (or people’s relations to their work) are significant predictors of a desire for financial and/or non-financial rewards...Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology