Differences in Motivation between Male and Female in Slovakia in 2015

Meeting human needs or life’s challenges, internal and external environments as well as some further factors affect motivation significantly. All factors are interconnected to each other and they create mutually connected parts of network. In the paper we mention the issue of motivational differences between male and female in Slovakia in the year 2015. Sampling unit contains 4,099 respondents. Deep knowledge of the differences plays a key role in employee job performance and affects the employees’ motivation effectively. Results of the social inquiry confirm great similarity between motivation factors of male and female in Slovakia in 2015. Despite small significant differences we can state that there is a possibility of creating unified motivation programme for employees regardless of gender. Specific gender differences in the level of motivation have to be taken into account in order to increase motivation. In the future meeting the needs of employees can cause the changes in their motivation requirements. Therefore we suggest the organisation to update motivation programme from time to time.


Introduction
Employee motivation plays an important role in the enterprise management.It is determined by social and physical environment associated with the work performed (Sharlyn, 2005;Ramlall, 2004;Srivastava et al., 2008).Research and experience suggest that motivation is a dynamic state that can fluctuate over time and in relation to different situations, rather than a static personal attribute.Dynamic power affects personal behaviour and activities (Kucharčíková, 2014) and can be described by direction and intensity.High-level performance achieved permanently is the main aim of motivation.The best form of motivation is built in context of the enterprise strategy (Hitka et al., 2015;Vaníčková, 2015), enterprise management level (Závadská et al. 2013).Managers create such an environment that affects employee motivation in positive way (Grazulis & Baziene, 2009).At the present time effective utilisation of human resources is a significant source of competitive advantage of individual enterprises (Syed et al., 2012).Factors affecting employee performance are mentioned by Hitka (2009).He divides them into: organisation, ergonomics and the impact of human resource management.Employee motivation is one of the factors as well and according to Bedrnová and Nový (2002) we understand it as "the human-centred approach to work and to specific work tasks, i.e. the particular form of willingness to work is explained by it."The process of motivation starts with the employee negative perception of working conditions (Potkány & Stachová, 2015), whereupon they try to reduce the negative effects, whereby there is a change in the decision-making process that covers intensity level of activity, the persistence to overcome obstacles and the behaviour and action tendency (Kropivšek et al., 2011).Subsequently, a real activity, it means employee performance starts.Enterprises are involved in the motivation process twice.Firstly, they are involved in the decision-making process about intensity, quality, direction and persistence of an activity (Potkány et al., 2012;Hitka & Štípalová, 2011;Kostiviarová & Sopková, 2009).In the case, an employee is influenced by prior experience, i.e. the experience gained at work we can speak about intangible performance incentives (Stacho et al., 2013;Zámečník, 2007).Secondly, we can speak about tangible performance incentives-monetary or non-monetary following the employee performance (Fuchsová & Kravčáková, 2004).Personal success, enjoyment of the job and self-awareness for achieving tasks and goals of their own as well as those of the enterprise are the essential aspects of the effective employee motivation and of the meeting the needs of employees (Kampf & Bucháčková, 2005).In the paper we analyse differences in the level of motivation and its relationship with gender in Slovak enterprises in 2015.

Method
Following the research we detected the differences in motivation between male and female.Equality of averages of two primary sampling units was tested using the survey analysis and the application of the Student's T-test (Scheer, 2007).The goal-setting questionnaire was used to determine the level of motivation and the analysis of motivation factors.The questionnaire was designed in order to study staff motivation since the year 2009; it consists of 30 closed questions (Hitka, 2008).The questionnaire was divided into two parts.Socio-demographic and qualification characteristics of employees were searched in the first part.Basic data about respondents relating to their age, sex, seniority, completed education and job position were obtained in this part.The second part consisted of individual motivation factors through which information about work environment, working conditions, applied appraisal and reward system, about personnel management, health and social care system and system of employee benefits as well as information about employee satisfaction or dissatisfaction, value orientation, relation to work and enterprise or co-workers' relationship in the enterprise can be found out.Motivation factors are in alphabetical order not to affect respondents' decision.In the questionnaire respondents evaluated individual motivation factors by one of the five levels of importance from a pre-defined 5-point rating scale, 5-very important and 1-unimportant (Table 1).
Table 1.Scale of the order of motivation factors according to their importance Statistical characteristics, which compressed information about studied primary sampling units into smaller number of numerical characteristics and made mutual comparison of sampling units easier, were computed for each motivation factor.Each motivation factor was described in summary by basic characteristics of size and variability of quantitative features-average x  , standard deviations sx and coefficients of variation.Subsequently the results of the enterprises were compared.Besides simple comparison of descriptive characteristic values, considering the selected type of obtained data, testing the equality of averages was carried out.The purpose of the Student's t-test was to verify statistical significance of differences in averages of individual motivation factors in studied enterprises so that the fact, that detected differences of descriptive characteristics at the selected level of significanceα were not caused only by the mistake made by representative sampling, was eliminated.Two-sample t-test was used to test the hypothesis about the equality of averages: H 0 : we suppose that averages of studied motivation factors of men are not equal to averages of studied motivation factors of women and at the same time we suppose that the difference between them, if any, is caused only owing to the random variation of results.The random variable t was used as a test criterion.The Student's t distribution was as follows:

Results
Questionnaires were submitted online to employees in randomly selected enterprises and organisations throughout Slovakia.4,099 respondents participated in social inquiry (Table 2).Table 3 shows the averages of desired state and state-of-the-art of the motivation of men and women and the difference between them that determines the extent of identifying with the motivation factor by men or by women.Following the values the difference in the level of motivation factors of men and women can be seen.The order of eight the most important motivation factors for men and women is illustrated in Table 4 and 5. Dominant motivation factors are similar, however, their sense for men and women are different.The more attention must be paid to mentioned motivation factors when creating motivation programme regardless of job position, age, education and seniority.

Conclusion
At the present time human resource development must be in the centre of attention of managers in order to improve employee performance (Myšková, 2005;Anwar et al., 2012).Enterprise management as well as staff have an important role in corporate performance management.Human resource departments in enterprises and organisations, where the management understood their position, can become a tool to improve performance (Teplická, 2004).That is also the way to support competitiveness and effectiveness of the enterprise (Kachaňáková & Urbancová, 2015).Implemented motivation programme is a part of the active enterprise policy.Creating motivation programmes is a difficult and expensive activity for each enterprise (Rajnoha et al., 2015).Its effectiveness is influenced by exact employee analysis.On the basis of actual analyses (Vetráková, M., Hitka, M., & Sedmák, R., 2007;Závadský et al., 2015;Hitka et al., 2015;Hafiza et al., 2011;Vetráková et al., 2013), we sum up our findings of carried out social inquiries and state that motivation factors of men and women in Slovakia in 2015 are very similar.However, specific differences in the level of motivation in terms of gender must be regarded by reason that it can be strengthened by motivation programme markedly.Despite the fact that unified motivation programme in terms of gender can be created by the enterprise, there are specific differences affecting its effectiveness especially in the decision-making process while managing men and women, especially differences between basic salary and supervisor's approach in the case of women and fair appraisal system in the case of men.Moreover, we can state that all employees are fully aware of the importance of job security and the fact that employers cannot provide employees adequate financial reward during recession.Therefore the enterprises should focus on the motivation using motivation factors based on interpersonal relationship job security.During recession employers tend to increase motivation that is why employee dissatisfaction is at lower level.Effective communication is a tool to create responsible relationship among employees as well as to ensure job security during recession (Kampf et al., 2014).This need is not in the centre of attention of many employers.Moreover, motivation requirements of employees can also change after meeting their needs considering the regional differences in Slovakia (Malachovský, 2014).Therefore we suggest the enterprise to update motivational programme from time to time.
motivation very important important medium important slightly important unimportant Current level of motivation very satisfied satisfied neutral slightly satisfied unsatisfied Source:Hitka, 2009.

Figure
Figure 3. Communication in the workplace

Table 2 .
The total number of respondents and their characteristics

Table 3 .
Averages of motivation factors in terms of gender in Slovakia in 2015

Table 5 .
The most important motivation factors-female, in 2015