The Impact of Employees’ Motivation Factors toward Job Satisfaction

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of employees’ motivation factors on job satisfaction in public universities. The objective is to find out the relationship between the employees’ motivation factors and job satisfaction, which was based on the theory of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The independent variables were physiological needs, safety and security needs, self-belonging needs, self-esteem needs and self-actualization needs, while the dependent variable was job satisfaction. The result was analysed using descriptive analysis to determine the factors of the employees’ motivation that led to job satisfaction. Thus, it was found that majority of the respondents agree to have the employees’ motivation factors to increase their job satisfaction. The results were also analysed using the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient to investigate the relationship between the employees’ motivation factors and job satisfaction. Therefore, it can be concluded that there was a moderate-to-substantial relationship, which shows a significant number of correlations in the relationship between the employees’ motivation factors and job satisfaction. The issue that has been discussed in this study would have contributed to the existing knowledge based on the theory and practise as well as provided benefits to other researchers. Besides that, the organisation would gain benefits from this study because they could evaluate their employees’ motivation levels and job satisfaction. Employees can also identify the needs that they require to increase their level of motivation.


Introduction
Nowadays, human resources have become an important element that leads to organisational success (Stefurak et al., 2020). It has been identified that one of the most difficult challenges for the human resource department is to achieve a high level of motivation and job satisfaction among employees (Janovac et al., 2021). It is believed that employees feel they do not receive enough motivational support from their top management and from their peers as well, which leads them to be unmotivated (Pei, 2007). Due to this reason, it can cause the employees to have poor performance. According to Bell and Sheridan (2020), job satisfaction can be a catalyst for improving the performance of employees, which would lead to organisational success. Basalamah and As'ad (2021) states that job satisfaction is an evaluation of employees' attitude towards their work. Thus, managers in the organisation who have knowledge about employees' motivation can implement some strategies to improve the performance of the employees in the workplace (Hitka et al., 2021).
Due to this reason, there are numerous theories of motivation that could be investigated. The theory of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is important to be investigated in this study because it has a significant impact in the fields of education and human development (Een et al., 2021). The objectives of the study are to identify the employees' motivation factors that lead to job satisfaction and to investigate the relationship between employees' motivation factors and their job satisfaction.

Literature Review
The purpose of the study is to identify the impact of employees' motivation factors on job satisfaction. The theory of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has been studied due to the importance of employees' motivation.

Motivation
Work motivation is important because it is a situation that requires individual to engage in a specific task to satisfy his own desires (Santos-Vijande et al., 2021). According to Loan (2020), work motivation has a positive impact on the performance of employees, the higher the employees' work motivation, the higher the results of their performance. This statement is in line with Suartina and Sadiartha (2019) who explained the work motivation and its positive impact on the employees' performance. When it comes to work, motivation has a connection between needs, encouragement, and goals to boost employees' performance (Stoyanov, 2017). Thus, Tella (2007) identified that one approach to makes people become motivated is to engage them with motivational values that can make them satisfied and committed to their jobs.

Maslow Theory
The Maslow theory was chosen because it provides a realistic and comprehensive exposure of the employees' motivation factors that lead to job satisfaction (Woolridge, 1995). The hierarchy of needs began to take place when Maslow (1943) organised the perception and clarified the needs into a five-stage hierarchy of needs in which the most important factor is the basic need for survival. Employees need to fulfil their physiological needs first, which are the lowest needs before they can move to the next stage of the pyramid, because this need is the most basic need that is crucial in Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Martin & Joomis, 2007). These basic needs would be essential criteria to identify whether the human beings are satisfied or dissatisfied with their life (Amin et al., 2021). Thus, the most vital or primitive needs that are needed are physical survival and safety, which are general to all human beings, followed by a need which belongs to a family, group or society. Furthermore, at this stage, people require spirits and socialisation to be completely satisfied (Aminah et al., 2021). Maslow (1943) proposed that ego and self-esteem needs should be assembled first before self-actualization needs which are possible to be achieved by people (Maslow, 1943).
The figure below shows the hierarchy of needs of Maslow Motivation Theory:

Figure 1. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory
Source: Goble (1970) Physiological Needs According to Sarma & Hoek (2004), physiological needs are at the lowest level and they are the most necessary needs. These needs are known as the basic needs, such as air to breath, food to eat, water to drink, shelter, and other needs that are needed by the human body (Suh et al., 2021). These needs also cover health, sleep, and transportation, which are necessary for humans to survive (Bozyigit, 2021). Employees are not able to move to the higher growth needs when they face difficulty in fulfilling their basic physiological needs (Louca et al., 2021). Most of the employees in the organisation think that better salaries and compensation can help them satisfy their basic needs because they work to earn the money to continue their lives (Nurul & Mosammod, 2011). Employees are believed not to benefit the organisation when they are hungry, so the organisations need to pay their salaries to ensure that they could afford to continue their lives (Kaur, 2013). According to Udechukwu (2009), employees would decide to quit their job when their basic needs are not met compared to those who can acquire their basic needs. A similar study by Norazmi (2020) stated that if we fail to address the basic human needs, it will disrupt human feelings, resulting in a lack of self-satisfaction in terms of personal development, career, or employment.
H1. There is a significant relationship between physiological needs and job satisfaction.

Safety and Security Needs
According to Azizi (2010), safety and security needs can become the next important needs when all physiological needs are fulfiled and they are no longer regulate people's thoughts and actions. This was confirmed by Guzel and Barakazi (2018), that the activation for safety and security needs begins when people already meet their physiological needs. This is proven because people would like to meet the safety needs at the second level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs after they have done stocking up on their basic needs (Bozyigit, 2021). There are some goods and services that can be categorized under personal and collective safety and security needs such as personality, property and political rights (Genkova, 2021). Safety also can be interpreted as the reaction towards something that is not harmful to happen including mentally, emotionally or physically and security can be defined as people's calm reactions towards uncertainties and their worry levels are low (Martin & Joomis, 2007).
H2. There is a significant relationship between safety and security needs and job satisfaction.

Self-Belonging Needs
When the needs for the first two stages have been met, people can focus more on love and self-belongingness needs (Bozyigit, 2021). It can be related with friendship, love, compassion, social acceptance and assistance from others, and this feeling belongs towards people and their surroundings (Gouws, 1995;Roos, 2005). Rewards can also provide a positive feeling of relief, pleasure, and satisfaction that makes people enjoy the relationship (Permana et al., 2021). To increase the self-belongingness of employees, organisations need to clarify employees' works that belongs to the organization, evolve mutual goals and values, as well as improve social interaction between the employees and outsiders to make sure that employees are satisfied with their job (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011).
H3. There is a significant relationship between self-belonging needs and job satisfaction.

Self-Esteem Needs
Self-esteem needs are classified as the person's preference to make people respect them and they want to get appreciation for themselves (Gouws, 1995) and they function as a measure of psychological wellbeing of a person (Ruderman et al., 2002). This need is not established directly because it will emerge on its own when the needs at one level below is met (Adawiyah, 2021). According to Banerjee and Das (2021), self-esteem is the intellectual status of a person to deal with the situations in his life. This need can be divided into two categories, which are the need for power, proficiency, maturity, self-reliance, and sovereignty, while the second one is the need for respect from others, rank, popularity, leverage, acceptability, importance and compliments from others (Altymurat et al., 2021). This is because the employees are highly motivated, and it can have a high impact on their job satisfaction. A person with high self-esteem will see a difficult job as an opportunity to learn, whereas a person with low self-esteem will see the job as a set of problems that will cause him to fail (Locke et al., 1996).
H4. There is a significant relationship between self-esteem needs and job satisfaction.

Self-Actualization Needs
Self-actualization needs are located at the top of the Maslow pyramid, which is described as the passion of the person to be capable of using his potentiality, ability, and capability (Oladayo, 2021). When an individual has achieved all the other needs in the lower stage of the Maslow pyramid, he is able to achieve more and more (Dwivedi, 2021). Besides that, according to Maslow, the highest need for self-actualization cannot be accomplished; even the lowest stage needs have been achieved (Heylighen, 1992). According to Bibi and Hessah (2019), self-actualization is a discussion about Maslow's inspiration philosophy, according to which individuals are searching for their potential ability to the maximum level as an entity. The success of the organisation would depend on the employees who have the quality of high self-actualization (Gopinath, 2020). It helps the employee to exchange knowledge within the organization, especially the knowledge of management practices (Gopinath, 2019). Apart from that, self-actualization may also comprise the following: becoming a healthy employee who is free from disease and having a peaceful mind (Chopra, 2021). Thus, it can help them to improve their personal growth and career advancement.
H5. There is a significant relationship between self-actualization needs and job satisfaction.

Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction can be identified when people have a pleasant feeling while completing their job and it can have an impact or result in evaluating various aspects of the job (Suong et al., 2019). According to Spector (2003), job satisfaction is vital for employee and organisational outcomes because it has an impact on job performance and the health and longevity of the person. It also takes a positive mindset of the employees towards their organisation and their working environment, so it leads to an organisational commitment (Pepe et al., 2017;Roch & Sai, 2017). According to Singhai (2016), job satisfaction is defined by the person's thoughts about his job and the organization. Gopinath (2020) states that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction evaluations are based on the nature of the job and the employee's expectations of their job. Employees who are satisfied with their work would perform well in their jobs, and they would give full engagement with the organisation for the organisational effectiveness and ultimate survival (Ross, 2005). Thus, people's evaluation towards their job are important because they can relate to the positive and negative sides (Sempane et al., 2002).
The conceptual framework for the dependent and independent variables as shown in Figure  2.

Methodology
The methodology for this study has been identified by sampling plan and instruments used. The sampling frame was drawn from a list of names of administration staff in one of the public universities, where there were approximately 300 staff. Thus, a convenient sampling technique was used because respondents could answer the questionnaire based on their willingness. According to Tabachnick and Fiddle (2007) as cited by Pallant (2011), the appropriate number of sample sizes can be calculated by using the formula of N > 50+8m, where m is the number of independent variables. Therefore, the appropriate sample size was 90 respondents. However, the researcher has decided to increase the sample size to 120 respondents. For data collection, a questionnaire with close-ended questions was personally distributed. This method gave a high return rate because any doubts by the respondents could be clarified quickly during the data collection. Thus, 120 questionnaires were analysed for this study, in which the percentage of response return rate was totally 100%, and it was adequate to conduct an analysis for this study. Table 1 below shows the Cronbach's Alpha values for the motivational factors. The factor of physiological needs has a reliability coefficient of 0.737 while the factor of safety and security needs has a value of 0.685. Meanwhile, the reliability coefficient value for the self-belonging needs was 0.716 and the self-esteem needs had a value of 0.707. Furthermore, the reliability coefficient for self-actualization needs was 0.672 and 0.822 for job satisfaction. Thus, it can be concluded that the instrument was reliable and it measured what it was supposed to measure.

Findings and Discussion
The analysis of the findings was analysed from data collected to answer in detail the six research questions of the study. The data received was analysed by using SPSS. Therefore, the elements discussed were the rate of survey return and the analysis of questions were related to the six research questions and also the hypothesis of the study.
First is about the respondents' demographic profile, which includes gender, marital status, age and level of education. The frequency of males was 62 respondents, which is 51.7%, while females were 58 respondents, which gives a percentage contribution of 48.3%. Besides that, the frequency that was found for single respondents was 21, whereas the respondents who were married were about 95, and the remaining 4 respondents were divorced. Therefore, the percentage of single status was 17.5% and the married percentage was 79.2% while divorced respondents only carried a percentage of 3.3%. This analysis also found that the frequency and percentage of the respondents who were at the age of 20 to 24 were 9 (7.5%), the respondents' age of 25 to 29 had a frequency of 25 (20.8%), and those who were around 30 to 34 were about 38 (31.7%). The rest of the age group from 35 until 39 were about 25 (20.8%), while the respondents who were between 40 and 44 were about 8 (6.7%). Another frequency that has resulted from the analysis was respondents who were at the age of 45 to 49, which shows 10 respondents (8.3%) and the last frequency that was related was between the age of 50 and above, which showed only 5 respondents (4.2%). Apart from that, the frequency of the respondents who have the SPM certification was 67, with a percentage of 55.8%, and the level of education in the Diploma corresponded to the frequency of 33 respondents, with a percentage of 27.5%. Then, the respondents who have a degree or equivalent qualification were 18, which has a percentage of 15.0%, and the frequency for Master's holders was only 2, with a percentage of 1.7%.
Next is to discuss the analysis of the findings for each element of the employees' motivation factors that have an impact on job satisfaction. The presentations of the questionnaires were divided into the mean and standard deviation for each of the factors of the employees' motivation. Table 2 below shows that one of the findings that can be made is about the mean of the physiological needs, which shows a value of 3.09 (SD=0.465). The mean of safety and security needs has a value of 3.12 (SD=0.437), while self-belonging needs has a mean of 3.16 (SD=0.405). Besides that, the mean value for the self-esteem needs has a number of 3.06 (SD=0.458) and the mean for the self-actualization needs is 3.18 (SD=0.467). These numbers mean show that the respondents have agreed to have physiological needs, safety and security needs, self-belonging needs, self-esteem needs, and self-actualization needs as the factors that can help them to increase their employees' motivation toward their job satisfaction. Thus, it can be identified that all of the motivational factors are considered to be important factors.

Correlation Results
The correlation results were designed to analyse the findings and answer the research questions that were related to the impact of the employees' motivation factors on job satisfaction, which were developed based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Thus, to determine the relationship between the employees' motivation factors and job satisfaction, the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to get correlation values. Preliminary analyses were performed to ensure that there is no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity. Table 3 shows that there was a moderate correlation and substantial relationship between both variables where the p value was significant at the level of 0.01. The value of correlation analysis for physiological needs is [r =0.570, n = 120, p 0.01], while for safety and security needs is [r =0.652, n = 120, p 0.01] and the value for self-belonging needs is [r =0.698, n = 120, p 0.01]. Next is for self-esteem needs, where the value is [r =0.616, n = 120, p 0.01] and for self-actualization needs, it is [r =.549, n = 120, p 0.01]. This indicates that high levels of physiological needs, safety and security needs, self-belonging needs, self-esteem needs, and self-actualization needs are associated with high levels of job satisfaction.
Thus, the result indicates that the physiological needs, safety and security needs, selfbelonging needs, self-esteem needs, and self-actualization needs have a relationship and significant correlation with job satisfaction, but the strength of the relationship was found to be medium. Therefore, the hypothesis developed was accepted.

Conclusion and Recommendations
Based on the analysis conducted, it has answered the two research objectives, six research questions, and five hypotheses that were developed. Therefore, the result of the analysis indicates that the employees agree and prefer to have motivational factors that can have an impact on job satisfaction, such as physiological needs, safety and security needs, self-belonging needs, self-esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Thus, all the hypotheses that were developed have been accepted in the study.
This study has proven that the employees' motivation factors have an impact on job satisfaction and they are significantly correlated with each other. When the employees' motivation is increased, the job satisfaction also increases as it has a relationship between them. Most employees prefer to have all motivational factors from their management to improve their job satisfaction. The employees should fulfil the lowest needs, which is more important in their lives, so that they can achieve the highest needs. As a result, employees will be able to move on to the next higher stage as their lower-level needs are achieved.
Therefore, several recommendations were made for future research to provide more depth in the analysis. More comprehensive studies should be conducted on a larger scale, and another method of sampling technique should be used. This is because this study was only conducted on the administration staff and using the convenience sampling technique.
Besides that, it is suggested that the scope of the respondents in the future should be expanded to obtain responses from other levels of management, such as the top management and middle management staff, to make comparisons between each level of management in one organization. It is recommended to use other theories of motivation, such as Herzberg's theory, which contains the factors of hygiene and satisfactory, apart from using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which contain the five factors. Other theories that can be proposed are the Expectancy Theory and Equity Theory.
The limitations were the sample size of the respondents, which was small and thus, it could not be generalised to the population. The data was also collected from only one organization, and this can make the results limited and are not generalizable. Finally, it is recommended that future researchers should complete the study in both public and private agencies to make the result become more valid and can be generalizable.