Employee motivation and job performance: Comparative study of mining companies in Ghana in any industry Staff is a key resource for that industry’s success. Human assets in the 21st century are considered as the most important assets of every company Work Performance (Hafiza, Shah, Jamsheed & Zaman, 2011). Mining staff, in particular, is an important component of higher productive agency budgets and has a key role to play in achieving industry goals. Gold mining is one of the main areas of natural resources which is often said to have the potential to improve a country’s economy through the attraction of foreign direct investment (Hilson & Banchirigah, 2009). “Gold is the largest contributor to the economy, accounting for about 38% of total merchandise and 95% of total mineral exports and about 80% of all mineral revenues” (Garvin, Mcgee, Smoyer-Tomic & Aubynn, 2009: page 572). The performance of mining staff (employees), as well as managers, determines to a large extent, the quality of employees as revealed by Hellriegel and Slocum (2007: page 55) that, “Low job satisfaction can result in costly turnover, absenteeism, tardiness, and even poor health.” bad”. This was further stated by Kreisman (2002) that the most valuable and volatile Work Performance asset of any institution is a well-motivated and stable workforce that is competent, dedicated, and productive. According to Gallagher and Einhorn (1976), whether monitoring expansion of firms’ activity, or reducing policy in response to declining demand, a manager is constantly trying to attract a better return on his capital investment. When these efforts are directed at the human part of company capital, managers focus on a recurring problem in business activity – “employee motivation”. Since all organizations are concerned with what needs to be done to achieve a sustainable high level of performance through people, it means paying attention to how individuals can best be motivated through means such as incentives, rewards and most importantly, the work they do and the organizational context in which they operate. doing the job cannot be underestimated (Armstrong, 2010). Without increasing employee motivation and morale, organizations risk losing valuable employees and will be at a disadvantage in attracting the best potential talent (Dessler, 2003). Rewards can serve to attract potential job applicants, achieve human resource goals and gain competitive advantage (Bratton & Gold, 2007). This is especially important in a competitive hybrid sector where mining companies struggle to find high caliber employees to improve quality of work and earn an excellent reputation. Caruth and Handlogten (2002) also Work Performance determined that the reward system is primarily considered a forerunner of employee motivation. Since the knowledge, skills and abilities of employees are the most important driving force for the success of any organization, commitment and ongoing support to them can be realized by finding effective ways to reward their contribution, loyalty, dedication and effort. According to Hafiza et al. (2011), there are several factors that can affect employee performance such as training and development opportunities, working conditions, worker-worker relations, job security and the company’s policies and procedures for rewarding employees. Among the Work Performance factors that affect employee performance, the motivation that comes with rewards is the most important (Carraher, Gibbson & Buckley, 2006). Motivation is defined as a process that explains the intensity, direction, and persistence of individuals in an effort to achieve goals (Halaman, 2008). According to Tosi, Mero and Rizzo (2000), motivation has a psychological and managerial meaning. The psychological meaning of motivation refers to a person’s internal mental state related to the initiation, direction, persistence, intensity and cessation of behavior. The managerial meaning of motivation, on the other hand, relates to the activities of managers and leaders to influence others to produce the results desired or outlined by the organization or by managers in accordance with the relationship between motivation, ability and performance. Since there are a wide variety of methods available for motivating staff, from recognizing employee accomplishments simply by saying “thank you” to more complex schemes that combine and set targets with fixed rewards (Torrington, Hall & Taylor, 2008), they may seem silly to the team responsible for motivation within a mining company to try to motivate their employees Work Performance when they don’t know what motivates employees.
