An investigation into motivating and demotivating factors affecting employees’ productivity in the Lao banking industry

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What are the significant motivating and demotivating factors which influence employees of the state-owned commercial banks in Laos? Sub-research questions: 1. From the employees’ perspectives, what are the potential factors that motivate employees in the Laos state-owned commercial banks? 2. From the employees’ perspectives, what are the potential factors that would demotivate employees in the Laos state-owned commercial banks? 3. What are the desired practices or factors that would increase employee motivation in the Lao state-owned commercial banks? ABSTRACT: The banking sector in Laos, be it state-owned or private banks, remains reliant on their employees for excellent customer service and positive outcomes. Since the Lao economy's new development system emerged, many new private banks from both domestic and international origins have been established throughout the country. The Lao state-owned commercial banks' management faced a challenging time to maintain their dominant market share in the banking sector. Employee motivation is the critical key to enable the state-owned commercial banks in Laos to maintain their competitive advantage and achieve their goals. This research project aimed at investigating the factors that motivate and demotivate employees in the Lao state-owned commercial banks as the public sector is the dominant player in the Lao banking industry. The study was conducted through the three leading state-owned commercial banks under three main objectives; being: (1) to identify motivating factors (2) to investigate the factors that cause demotivation to employee productivity and (3) to discover the desired practices that would increase motivation and decrease demotivation of the bank employees. To achieve these objectives of the research, semi-structured interviews, with a qualitative approach, were used to obtain the data through online video conferencing via Zoom. The data collecting process involved interviewing a total of 15 employees of three state-owned commercial banks in Laos. Based on the empirical findings, it was found that these study participants are motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors. However, extrinsic motivation was shown to be a more potent motivating factor than intrinsic motivation among these fifteen participants. This is because extrinsic factors, such as employee benefits and financial rewards, gained the two highest scores for motivating factors. Meanwhile, career advancement, training programmes, good relationships with co-workers, challenging tasks, and recognition were intrinsic motivations that have potentially influenced this study’s participants’ motivation. The demotivating factors identified in this study were mainly related to inequality practices, fairness and transparency in the workplace. The results also suggest three important areas that need to be improved by the bank to increase motivation and decrease demotivation of employees, being: (1) people management (HR practices) such as effective job rotation and individual career path, (2) effective culture and management styles that focus on equality, and fairness, and (3) employee welfare and benefits that are more reliable and in relation to the economic condition that meets the standard of living of employees