Employee Motivation: What Factors Motivate Employees to Work in Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO) in Sri Lanka: A Study According to Maslows

Hierarchy of Needs Model

Chatura Pulasinghage, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Abstract: Apart from the government and the private sector, The Non-Government Organizations (NGO) is the next best alternative employment sector in Sri Lanka. After the Tsunami 2004, there were more than 200 NGOs in Sri Lanka implementing Tsunami relief projects. Many of the graduates and professionals were hired by these NGOs as project staff and consultants in addition to casual labor and clerical positions. This paper sets out to find out the factors that motivated the majority of the work force in Sri Lanka to jobs in the nongovernment sector after the Tsunami 2004. This research looked at five nongovernmental organization categories and five occupational categories within them. The study was aimed to find out how the motivator factors differ among the occupational categories and nongovernmental organization categories. According to the Maslows hierarchy of needs model, employees of United Nations, international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations were at higher motivational levels. Expatriates, national consultants, executives and managerial staff were also highly motivated to work in their respective nongovernmental organizations. Executives and managerial staff mostly represent fresh graduates and mid professional, that were employed in government and privates sector organizations prior to the Tsunami 2004. Most NGOs left Sri Lanka by the end of year 2007. The Unemployment rate went up and most of the executives and managerial staff that were working in NGOs were left unemployed. Since these two occupational categories were highly motivated to work in NGOs and specially to work in United Nations, international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations, the study recommends that private and the government sector jobs should be upgraded to suite this unemployed workforce. Keywords: Non Government Organizations (NGO), Motivation, Maslows Hierarchy

Introduction

ON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGO) plays a vital part in providing employment to the Sri Lankan workforce. They were in the country for a long time and now appear to be expanding rapidly. After the Tsunami 2004, there were over 200 nongovernmental organizations to be seen in Sri Lanka. These organizations operated in many fields. Five categories of nongovernmental organizations can be identified in Sri Lanka. Those are local nongovernmental organizations, international nongovernmental organizations, co-operatives and societies, international organizations and United Nations (Center for Non Governmental Organizations, 2006). Sri Lanka had a fewer number of nongovernmental organizations prior to the Tsunami disaster in 2004. Just after the Tsunami, country was pledge with lot of money and there were more than 200 nongovernmental organizations just to deal with that money. There were 263 nongovernmental or-

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ganizations working in Tsunami affected areas of Sri Lanka just after the Tsunami 2004. Many organizations ended their mandate within one year. Few of them had extensions up to more than 4 years. Most of these NGOs are supposed to end their Tsunami related activities in Sri Lanka by the end of 2008. (Sun Day Observer, 18th November 2006). As Mentioned earlier, the response to Tsunami disaster brought large amount of money to the country to assist in the rebuilding programs. According to United Nations (2007), nongovernmental organizations demanded high number of employment opportunities in all Tsunami affected areas. All of them were highly work intensive and comprised of higher salaries and benefit packages. Professionals as engineers, doctors, agriculturists, sociologists, ecologists, environmentalists, and economists were hired with higher salaries than any other organization in Sri Lanka. Wijeratne (2006) points out that the NGOs gave many opportunities to graduates to work for higher salaries. Even though most employment opportunities were short term contracts between 6 months to one year, it attracted graduates due to high salaries and benefit packages. All these employment opportunities were equal opportunities. People were hired regardless of the gender, ethnicity or religion. Since the Tsunami rehabilitation work spread to south, north and east provinces of Sri Lanka, it gave employment opportunities to Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil people. With huge amount of money and other technical supports, nongovernmental organizations were working in sectors of environment, construction, education, food and nutrition, health and sanitation and psychosocial. Job opportunities were created not only for Sri Lankans, but also for other employees all around the world. (Relief Web, 16th September 2006). Even though many jobs were created by the NGOs, there were many concerned about the sustainability of the employment that these organizations are providing. Daily News, 25th September 2006 highlights the fact that, most NGOs are suppose to leave the country within a maximum of 5 years1. Therefore, after 5 years, there will plenty of unemployed people in the country. Daily news further emphasized that even the government could relax now, since people are employed, but after 5 years, the government will have to find solutions to tackle the unemployment problem. It is important to identify the factors that affect people to work in these nongovernmental organizations. Then, it is the government and the private sectors responsibility to include these factors in to the new jobs that they create in the future. International Labor Organization (ILO), (2008) notes that the employment problem in Sri Lanka is not the lack of jobs but more of a miss match of jobs. ILO further said that the job profiles of the government and private sector has not been upgraded for a long and does not matches with the NGOs: where NIGOs follow global salary scales, most of the time. Wijeratne (2006) identified that most of the graduates and professional in Sri Lanka would prefer to work in an international working environment that can be seen in NGOs rather than the government and private sector and the recommendation of his study was to introduce jobs profiles and working environments that can be seen in international organizations to the jobs in government and private sector. Even though both ILO and Wijeratne recommended that government and private sector should upgrade the job profiles and working environments of government and private sector, they failed to specify the motivator factors that motivate employees to take on employments in NGOs. What motivate this research is the specific characteristic of jobs in NGOs which act as a motivator for employees. Practical action
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What the newspaper predicted is that by the end of year 2010, there will be more unemployed persons, which has been let go by NGOs.

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(2006) highlighted that competitive salaries, benefit packages including transportation, DSA2 (Daily subsistence allowance), fuel, and local and abroad training programs, workshops and seminars are some factors that employments in an NGO has that would motivate people to look for jobs at NGOs, but they did not conduct any surveys to confirm their thoughts. ILO (2008) also notes that higher salaries, exposure to international working environments, target oriented and result based team works and dynamic working environments are few of the benefits that nongovernmental organizational employees receive. Yet, none of these studies find out whether these factors actually attract employees to NGOs or not with an empirical setting. Therefore, the aim of this research is to find out factors that motivate employees to take on jobs at NGOs. Motivator factors will be identified based on the NGO category and occupational category. Findings of this research will be helpful for the government policy makers and private sector to upgrade their job profiles by including motivator factors that can attract more employees. I would present different NGO categories that were used in the research, below. These categories were: local non-governmental organizations, international nongovernmental organizations, Co-operatives and societies, international organizations and United Nations.

Local Non-governmental Organizations

Following is a list of all the local non-governmental organizations that are working in Sri Lanka. There are 12 local non-governmental organizations working in Sri Lanka. Those agencies are: Association for International Co-operation & Humanitarian Aid (Alisei), Bio Diversity Research, Information and Training Centre (BDRITC), Caritas - Eastern Human Economic Development Centre (Caritas - EHED), Center for Policy Alternative (CPA), Center for Social Assessment (CSA), Centre for the Promotion & Protection of Human Rights (CPPHR), Community Trust Fund (CTF), Environmental Management & Development Institute (EMI), Foundation For Co-Existence (FCE), Green Movement of Sri Lanka (GMSL), Lanka Help & Development Foundation (Help Sri Lanka) (LHDF) and Plan International Sri Lanka.

International Nongovernmental Organizations

International nongovernmental organizations are the second category NGOs working in Sri Lanka. There 25 international nongovernmental organizations working in Sri Lanka today. The list of these agencies would follow as: Adventist Development and Relief Agencies Sri Lanka (ADRA Sri Lanka), American Refugee Committee (ARC), Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), British Red Cross (BRC), CARE International -Sri Lanka (CARE), Caritas Sri Lanka, Christian Childrens Fund - Sri Lanka (CCF), Danish Refugee Council (DRC), FORUT International (FORUT), GOAL, Handicap International (HI), Helpage Sri Lanka (HELPAGE), IFRC - French Red Cross, International Relief and Development (IRD), JICA-Sri Lanka (JICA), Mercy Corps, MERLIN (MERLIN), Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Oxfam Australia (OXFAM), OXFAM Great Britain (OXFAM
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Daily subsistence Allowance (DSA) is given to employees that go and work outside their base station. It is given on the basis of the number of nights an employee spends outside the base station, doing an official work. And heavily depends on the organization.

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GB), Practical Action/ ITDG, Save the Children in Sri Lanka (SCiSL), SOLIDARITESAide humanitaire d`urgence (SOLIDARITIES), World University Service of Canada (WUSC), World Vision Lanka (WVL), Zoa Refugee Care - Netherlands (ZOA).

Co-operatives and Societies

The third category of nongovernmental organizations is cooperatives and societies. There are 5 nongovernmental organizations than can be categorized as cooperatives and societies. They are: SEEDS (Sarvodaya), Rain Forest Rescue International (RRI), Mihidiya Project, Sevanatha, Environmental Journalist Forum.

International Organizations
International organizations are the 4th category of nongovernmental organizations working in Sri Lanka. There are 5 organizations that falls in to the category of international organizations. And the list follows as: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), IUCN World Conservation Union, IWMI, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA).

United Nations
Fifth and final category of nongovernmental organizations working in Sri Lanka is United Nations. There are 12 United Nations organizations working in Sri Lanka currently. Following is a list of all those United Nations agencies that are working in Sri Lanka. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Labor Organization (ILO), International Organization for Migration (IOM), UN HABITAT, United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),United Nations International Childrens Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO) (Humanitarian Information Center, United Nations, 2006). The point to remember is that the above list of NGOs represents the nongovernmental organizations that were working in Sri Lanka by the end of 2007 only. There were 263 nongovernmental organizations just after the Tsunami. Most of the nongovernmental organizations worked in Sri Lanka only for 1 to 2 years. Above list of nongovernmental organizations contains only 57 nongovernmental organizations. Therefore 206 nongovernmental organizations that were working in Sri Lanka has already closed down their operations and has gone out of the country. ILO (2008) notes that the most employees that became unemployed because of the closure of nongovernment organizations has not found suitable jobs by the end of 20083. ILO further emphasis that this number might well increase in years to come. Central Bank report (2008) also suggests an increase in the unemployment of Sri Lanka during the years of 2006 and 2008. This increase was accounted towards the losses of employments caused by the closure of nongovernment organizations. Ministry of labor
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ILO confirms that most employees have not found suitable jobs for their qualification, but mentioned that people have move on to take on jobs which undermines their qualifications.

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(2008) also notes that increase in the unemployment percentage during the years of 2006 and 2008 are due to the closure of nongovernmental organizations. They also highlighted that most of the unemployed people are university graduates and professional. A study done my IPS (2007) found out that employees that lost their jobs after working for nongovernmental organizations would prefer same working conditions and facilities that they experienced while working for NGOs. Therefore this research was conducted with the main objective of identifying the factors that motivate employees to work for nongovernmental organizations. A sub-objective of this research was to provide recommendations that government and private sector can use to improve their job profiles and working environments which would attract more employees. In the next section of this paper I will present the conceptual frame work of this research.

The Conceptual Frame Work

Conceptual framework of this research comes from several sources. There are two: the first conceptual framework follows the Maslows hierarchy of needs model. Despite the fact that the Maslows hierarchy of needs model was introduces some time back, it has still been effectively used as a baseline to determine employee motivation in organizational management studies, all around the world4. The second conceptual framework is designed by Wijeratne (2006), which shows the casual relationship between the motivator factors of an employee and productivity. Even though Maslows hierarchy of needs model identified the different motivator factors of an employee in a hierarchical manner, it fails to link these motivator factors to the productivity of the employee, and the organization as a whole. The model identified by the Wijeratne (2006) would fill this gap. Most importantly, the conceptual framework by Wijeratne (2006) is designed for organizations in Sri Lanka, which to my belief is much more relevant to this study.

Conceptual Framework (1): Maslows Hierarchy of Needs: Five Needs Model

Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs model during 1940-50s in United States of America. Maslows hierarchy of needs model identifies five levels of motivation with in an employee. Within each level, there are needs that employees would like to get fulfilled. The assumption of this model is that, each employee of an organization would be at a given level of the hierarchy of needs, and always would prefer to achieve the next level. An employee would move to another level after achieving the needs in the level below to that. Over the time, several levels of needs were added to the original model of Maslows hierarchy of needs. Since the five level model best describes the motivational level of a nongovernmental organizational employee in Sri Lanka, this study uses the basic model. These five levels are as follows:

Maslows hierarchy of needs model identifies the motivator factors of an employee in to different hierarchical levels. It is assumed that an employee at a given time would belong to a particular hierarchy in the model. This hierarchy has a pyramid shape, where employees will always tries to move to a higher level of the pyramid.

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Biological and physiological needs This is the first level of needs in the Maslows hierarchy of needs model. These are the basic needs than an employee would like to achieve. I would rather say that these are the basic needs that any person should have. The needs are: air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, and sleep. Safety needs Safety needs are the needs that included in the second level of the hierarchy. The needs are: protection from elements, security, order, law, limits and stability. Belongingness and love needs Belongingness and love needs are the third level of needs that an employee would like to achieve. The needs are: work group, family, affection and relationships. Esteem needs Fourth level of needs are: self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige and managerial responsibility. Self-actualization needs Fifth and the highest level of needs are: realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences. Source: Sirgy and Samli, 2005, Stephens, 2000 and Sultan, 2005. Below section highlights the important elements of the second conceptual framework that this study utilizes to evaluate the linkage between the motivation and the productivity of the employee himself and the organization. Its beyond the scope of this research to evaluate the productivity of the organization given the different levels of motivation of the employees of the organizations. Yet, it is very important to make the link between the employee motivation and the productivity of employees and ultimately of the organization, from the beginning of a study, such as this.

The Conceptual Framework (2)

Source: Wijeratne, 2006

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As mentioned earlier, the second conceptual framework identifies the casual relationship between the motivational factors and the productivity of the organization. It is clear that the motivational factors of this model belong to different levels of the Maslows hierarchy of needs model. Achieving motivational factors would increase the motivation of employees. This would leads to an increase in the job satisfaction of employees. Motivated employees that are satisfied with their jobs would be more efficient and would increase the productivity of the organization. When the productivity of the organization increases, it will lead to more profits, and the organization would be able to provide more motivational factors to their employees. There is a two way relationship between motivational factors and employee motivation. Motivational factors increases the motivation of employees and motivated employees would always try to achieve more needs that they have not been able achieve yet.

Methods
Aim of this section is to introduce the sampling, data collection and analysis methods of the study. First, I will discuss the sampling method and the data collection procedure of this study and then will illustrate the data analysis procedure. Primary respondents of this study were the employees in different occupational categories with in different organizational categories. Sample of primary respondents were selected using random stratified sampling method. There were 57 nongovernmental organizations working in Sri Lanka which belong to five categories5. Total number of 16 nongovernmental organizations was selected from all the categories, and altogether 375 employees were selected from all 5 categories of nongovernmental organizations. Within a given nongovernmental organizations, employees were selected in such a way, that they represents all 5 categories of employments. A survey questionnaire6 was used as the data collection instrument. Altogether, 375 employees were surveyed at their working place. The survey took approximately 30 minutes per respondent. Nongovernmental organizations that were selected for this study was: Green Movement of Sri Lanka (GMSL), Plan International -Sri Lanka, Environmental Management & Development Institute (EMI), Practical Action/ ITDG, CARE International -Sri Lanka, World Vision Lanka (WVL), French Red Cross (IFRC), SEEDS (Sarvodaya), Rain Forest Rescue International (RRI), Sevanatha, IUCN -World Conservation Union, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
5

A list of nongovernmental organizations was obtained from the center for nongovernmental organizations (CNO) and United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Sri Lanka and was cross checked for confirmation. 6 The survey questionnaire was used as an interview script where the author reads the script to the primary respondents, and the answers were written down in front of the primary respondent. Rights of the primary respondents were read to them prior to the interview and the verbal consent to participate was obtained. Separate notes were taken on a piece of paper during the interview. All the data from the interview was entered to the computer on the same day of the interview and any information that could link the answers to the questionnaire and the particular employee was destroyed. Also none of the names of the respondents were recorded. All these actions were taken to protect the confidentiality of the primary respondents. The survey questionnaire was divided in to two parts. First part collected information on the particular occupational category while the second part collected information on the particular organization that the employee represented. First part of the survey questionnaire comprised of 15 questions while the second part with 10 questions, altogether 25 questions.

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United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). As mentioned earlier, this study selected 5 occupational categories with an each nongovernmental organization for the survey. The occupational categories selected were: expatriates, national consultants, managerial staff, executive staff and support staff. Following section, I present the major variables that were selected for this study. These variables were selected based on the conceptual frameworks identified using Maslows hierarchy of needs model and Wijeratnes model that connect motivator factors with the productivity. Each variable identified to proxy the motivation of employees represent a particular level in the Maslows hierarchy of needs model. These variables also fall within the motivational model of Wijeratne. The variables selected for this study and the level of needs they belong to according to Maslows hierarchy were: biological and physiological needs (Foods and refreshments, cloths and accommodation), safety needs (Personnel security and protection, salary, job security and limits), belongingness and love needs (Employee relationships and affection), esteem needs (Status, responsibility and empowerment), self-actualization needs (focus of problem centering, peak experience and realization of the potentials). In below section, I will present the dada analysis method for this study. The data analysis of the study comprised only of qualitative descriptive methods7. Yet, I have identified a possible quantitative method for this research to analyze its data, as a future step. Since this study analyses its data in two levels: organizational category level and occupational category level, it is important to look at the data in a qualitative prospective as a first step. In this research, the qualitative analysis looked how important each and every variable to employees as a means of improving their motivation both within their occupational category and within the organization. The qualitative analysis also will identify the variation of the importance of motivational factors to the employees among different occupational categories and different organizational structures. This whole analysis will be done using two approaches. Since each and every variable represents a need that would affect the motivation of employees to work in the nongovernmental organizations, firstly the qualitative analysis looked at what motivator factors are actually provided to employees that are already working in nongovernmental organizations and how it varies based on the occupational categories. So, what actually the study looked at is, whether the motivator factors are provided to these employees or not. Provision of these motivator factors to these employees gives an indication about their motivation to work in these organizations. Secondly, a comparison was done with all the nongovernmental organizational categories to find out how the provision of these motivator factors varies among nongovernment organizational categories. Therefore, both these approaches will help to identify the current level of motivation of the employees both within and among the occupational categories and organizational categories and would make provisions to make necessary recommendations to improve the level of motivation within and among occupational categories and organizational categories.

The scope of this study was to find out the motivator factors which attract employees to nongovernmental organizations. Given a particular nongovernmental organization, I wanted to look at how the provision of these motivator factors differs according to occupational category and how the provision of these motivator factors differs according to nongovernment organizational category. The best and simplest way to do this was to do a qualitative analysis, since it will be easier to explain the results.

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Results
Results of this study is presented under the five levels of needs that was selected according to the Maslows hierarchy of needs model. Within each level of need, I will talk about the variables one by one. In presenting results of a motivator factor, I will first illustrates the results based on the occupational category, and then would present the results based on the nongovernmental organization category.

Assessment of the Biological and Physiological Needs based on the Maslows Hierarchy
When consider about the occupational category, expatriates and national consultants are the people who receive foods and refreshments most of the time. Apart from the basic tea breaks which everybody receives, these people receive additional foods and refreshments. Most organizations provide lunch for the expatriates on behalf of the organization. During the research, the word uniforms was used to represent clothes provided to employees and other fabrics with the organizational logo. These clothes were to be worn during the work hours and field activities. Considering the occupational category, apart from the expatriates, the supporting staffs are being given cloths. This is basically because these people are engaged more in the field work and they are required to wear the cloths with the organization logo. e.g.: In organizations like Red Cross, drivers are mandatory to wear the shirts with the logos, and in United Nations, they are given uniforms. Not surprisingly due to the rich budgets they have, United Nations, international nongovernmental organizations and international organizations are being able to provide these to their employees. Next motivator factor is the accommodation for the employees. This was a necessary need for all the employee categories. Since most of the nongovernmental organizations operate in war affected areas of the country, providing accommodation to employees out of their base station has become a very important factor. Therefore there is not much variation in the provision accommodation within occupational categories. But there are exceptions. All occupational categories receive a Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) when they move out of their base station for field work. This DSA would cover the food and lodging costs of an employee. The study found out a greater variation in the amount of DSA given to employees based on the occupational categories. Support staff always receives the lowest amount of DSA. Executive and managerial staff receives all most the same amount. National consultants and Expatriates received the highest amounts, and this is 3 to 4 times higher than what is received by the support staff. This is a dominant feature for expatriates and national consultants compared to all other occupational categories. It was noted that most organizations provide accommodation to its employees very close to its base station mostly in the form of hostels and staff houses. Some nongovernmental organizations rent hotel rooms for their expatriates and senior managerial staff while some have go on to repair Tsunami damaged houses for accommodation by paying a rent or forming a lease agreement with the owner. Some organizations have even rented or bought new lands and have built new premises for the accommodations of the employees.

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Assessment of the Safety Needs based on the Maslows Hierarchy

The first motivator factor that will be looked at is personal security and protection. This does not vary depending on the occupational category. All most all occupational categories receive the same level of personal security and protection from their respective organizations. This is a motivator factor that differs mostly based on the nongovernmental organization category. In United Nations, every employee must face basic and advanced field security tests and obtain the necessary certificated before going to the field. But there are some local nongovernmental organizations that do not stress on the personal security of their employee very much. Most of the private sector organizations do provide an insurance scheme to their employees. But this is not very much common for the nongovernment organizations. The money factor plays a major role in these decisions. Organizations like United Nations and international organizations do provide these facilities to the employees. Still, within some international organizations, the personal insurance is only allocated to expatriates and national consultants. The second motivator factor that will be looked at is the job security. Expatriates and national consultants work mostly on the contract basis. Most of the expatriates do return back to their countries after maximum of two years. Most of the national consultants do engage in several consultancy agreements, thus they prefer to operate on short term contracts. All most all the private sector organizations and government organizations do issue employment opportunities on permanent basis, but it is not the case with the nongovernmental organizations. Most all the nongovernment organizations issue short term or fixed term contracts. According to findings cooperatives, local nongovernmental organizations and international organizations do issue permanent employment opportunities to some extent. This is due to the longer term operational mandates they have in Sri Lanka. But international non-governmental organizations and United Nations are heavily based on the contract employments. Thirdly, salary is also an important motivator factor under the safety needs. All the occupational categories receive higher salaries compared to private or government sector. Still there is a large variation among the occupational categories. Expatriates and national consultants are getting higher salaries even five times higher than managerial staff. Most of the time, the salary of a national consultant is based on the relationship that he or she has between the head of the organization rather than the job profile. As a whole, all the nongovernment organizations do offer competitive salaries to their employees. This is basically because they offer temporary employments most of the time. Depending on the organization, United Nations, international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations do offer higher salaries compared to other nongovernmental organizations. This feature is basically based on the financial strength and the reputation of the organization. Fourthly, consider the motivator factor limits. Limits represent the flexible working hours and the number of leaves which an employee gets within a year. All most all the employees except expatriates believe that they dont have enough leaves and they dont have flexible working hours. Expatriates takes leaves very rarely, most of the times it is once a year. The longest leave they take it for the Christmas, and it is about two weeks. Expatriates do not adhere to fixed working hours most of the time. There is a unique reason for this. Expatriates frequently communicate with their head quarters. And there is a time difference between the head quarters and Sri Lanka. Thus sometimes they have to come to work early or work till night in order to compensate this time difference. But national consultants strictly practice

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the fixed working hour principle. All the other occupational categories follow the same working house as a private sector organization except during the field activities outside the base station. NGO category wise, most of the nongovernmental organizations do not have fixed working hours except the international organizations. United Nations does not believe in fixed working hours concept and mostly believe in a task based working environment. Both government and the private sector have well defined leave system in place. But this is not the case with nongovernmental organizations. Survey found out that only international organizations and cooperatives have a proper leave system. All the other do not have a proper leave system and the leaves are not enough to meet the employee demands.

Assessment of the Belongingness and Love Needs based on the Maslows Hierarchy
The first motivator factor to be looked at this section is employee relations. According to the occupational category, expatriates and executive staff have found nongovernmental organizations as a good place to work because of the employee relationships. Expatriates are out of their home countries and they find nongovernmental organizations as a place they can share their experience and sometimes even to find their own country mates after a long time. Most executives are young, similarly educated with similar experience and from similar background. Nongovernmental organizations create executives a perfect environment to share their experience and build up a carrier by engaging with expatriates and national consultants more and more. Most of the United Nations organizations and international organizations do have good employee relation in practice. Others also do have this motivator factor up to some extent. Employee relations are heavily depending on the attitudes of the heads of the organization. Most of the expatriates who are at the head position of the organizations seem to promote this culture more and more. The second motivator factor is the affection. Based on the occupational category, the support staff thinks their organizations have affection towards them. This is basically because in lot of situations, organizations helped their support staff out of their normal financial mandate. The executive staff also thinks that organization observe affection towards them since they have more chances of been associated with expatriates and national consultants. NGO category wise, most of the International organizations and international nongovernmental organizations do practice affection towards the employees. Both cooperatives and local nongovernmental organizations practice employee affection in a positive manner. This is basically because they have local employees, mostly. United Nations too, shows good affection towards their employees. Therefore, affection wise, there is no significant variation based on the nongovernmental organization category. The third motivator factor is team work culture. Team work culture is very important to any organization who tries to achieve common goals. And this is very important to humanitarian organizations since they want to do productive work in a shorter time span. All occupational categories believe that they experience team work culture in nongovernmental organizations. These results also does not change based on the nongovernmental organization category. All the nongovernment organizations provide team work environments to all the occupational categories.

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Assessment of the Esteem Needs based on the Maslows Hierarchy

The first motivator factor will be discussed is reputation. Expatriates and executive staff believe that they have a higher status by representing their nongovernmental organization. This is mainly due to the fact that, the government welcomes them very warmly and they are entitled to special privileges. Apart from the local nongovernmental organizations and cooperatives, all the other nongovernmental organizations categories have the perception that they have a good reputation in the country as well as in the world. The second motivator factor that will be discussed under this section is the responsibility. On the occupational category wise, it is the expatriates who feel mostly that they have given responsibility by their organization. Managerial and executive staff also believes that they are given enough responsibilities by their respective nongovernmental organization. But National consultants think that they are not been given enough responsibilities. Nongovernmental organizations category wise, United Nations employees and local nongovernmental organizations think that they have greater responsibility in their work. United Nations is basically the entity who engages in largest projects in Sri Lanka from nongovernmental organizations prospective. Local nongovernment organizational employees also think that they feel the responsibility to the country, since most of their projects are focused on rural areas and the grassroots level people. The tired motivational factor in this section is the empowerment. The situation is such that in the occupational category, the expatriates have more empowerment than all the others, since they are the leading actors in the organizations. But there are situations that the managerial staff is given the empowerment too. Support staff is given little empowerment but the national consultants are given the least empowerment. The survey found out that most notational consultants feel that they have been hired to represent the organization in dealing with the government rather than making decisions. International organizations give more empowerment to their employees than any other organizational category. Surprisingly, United Nations gives very little empowerment, basically because of the higher bureaucracy.

Assessment of the Self-actualization Needs based on the Maslows Hierarchy

The responses to self actualization needs were low within the whole survey. For an employee to look for self actualizations needs takes lot of time and working experience. Even though three motivator factors were selected for this section, I will discuss them altogether. The motivator factors are: focus on problem centering work, peak experience and realization of potentials. Form all the occupational categories, national consultants believe that the nongovernment organizations would help them to achieve all above three needs. Expatriates believe that working in the nongovernmental organizations would help them to achieve their focus on the problem centered work. International organizations and United Nation have been a place for employees to achieve their focus on problem centered work, peak experience and realization of potentials.

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Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, this study used the Maslows hierarchy of needs model to look at what factors of motivation is been provided to employee of nongovernmental organizations in order for them to select nongovernmental organizations as oppose to government or private sector organizations as a working environment. Then the study moved on to identify the categories of nongovernment organizations that provide employees these motivator factors most. The survey was done among five occupational categories: expatriates, national consultant, managerial staff, executive staff and support staff. The nongovernmental organizational categories selected were: United Nations, international organizations, international nongovernmental organizations, local nongovernmental organizations and cooperatives and societies. The survey results show that the nongovernmental organizations as a whole are best suited for support staff, executive staff and expatriates. Even though the achievement of each motivator factor in each level would differ for these three occupational categories, as a general conclusion, this three occupational categories realize most of their needs by working at nongovernmental organizations. Even though, United Nations is the biggest nongovernmental organization category in the country it is not the best place for all the occupational categories to work for. United Nations, international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations provide most of the motivator factor to expatriates, managerial staff, executive staff and support staff. National consultants would prefer to work in local nongovernmental organizations and international nongovernmental organizations since they receive more empowerment and recognition by working there. Cooperatives and societies are not much preferred by any group of employees, but were recorded as a place which provided more responsibility to employees. Lack of recognition and other facilities as salary, personal security and empowerment would hold employees from getting attracted to work with cooperatives and societies. The biggest advantage of international organizations and United Nations is the status they have with in the country. International organizations and United Nations attracted most of the executive staff to those organizations. The executive staff and the managerial staff are the main occupational categories that took jobs in nongovernmental organizations after the Tsunami 2004. These are the people that lost jobs after the closure of programs by nearly 200 nongovernmental organizations by the end of 2007. These two occupational categories represent fresh graduates from universities and middle level professionals that were working in the private and government sector. Most of the support staff that was attracted by nongovernment organizations was working at the same levels of jobs and sometimes even at lower levels. Support staff was mainly represents the casual labor and most of the time had the option of going back to their previous jobs. National consultants also were mostly working in the government sector, where they took leaves and joined nongovernment organizations for a short period of time. Some national consultants were even retired from their jobs before joining nongovernmental organizations. Expatriates always find other jobs in other countries, and to be frank this occupational category did not increase the unemployment of Sri Lanka at all. Therefore what really matted was that occupational categories of executive staff and managerial staff. As mentioned earlier, executive staff consisted of fresh graduates and managerial staff consisted of mid professional those were working for private and government

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sector. Therefore it is clear that there people would have no place to work once the projects were closed by nongovernmental organizations. They were attracted by the NGOs because of reputation, salaries, personals security, responsibilities, employee relations, affections and teamwork culture. And they were attracted by United Nations, International organizationa and international nongovernmental organizations. Therefore the government and the private sector which is the next best alternative for these employees should try to provide these motivator factors in their job profiles that would ultimately match the working environment of United Nations, international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations. A possible extension of this study is to analyze the data statistically. This involves doing a regression analysis based on an empirical model which assess whether the motivator factors provided by nongovernmental organization would affect the motivation of employees or not. The Empirical model can be a probit model where the dependent variable is the probability of increasing the overall motivation of employees by the motivator factors. The independent variables could be the provision of each motivator factors and some other factors that might affect the motivation of employees. This model can be also used to test whether there are any other factors which might affect the motivation of employees other than the factors identified through the Maslows hierarchy of needs model.

References
Center for Non Governmental Organizations, Non Governmental Organizations in Sri Lanka, 2006. Central Bank, 2008. Central Bank Report of 2008. Central Bank, Government of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka. Daily News, Higher job demand in the Non Governmental Organizations after Tsunami, 25th September 2006 Handlogten G.D. 2001. Managing Compensation (And Understanding It Too): A Handbook for the Perplexed. Westport CT. Quorum Publications. Humanitarian Information Center (HIC), Humanitarian Information Data Base, United Nations Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2006) International Labor Organization of United Nations, Bring back Better, ILO, United Nations, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2008 Ministry of Labor. 2008. Labor details for the year 2007. Ministry of Labor, Government of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka. Pararkrama Karunarathne. 2008. A review of Coastal Zone Laws and Implementation Experience In Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka: Stamford Lake Publications. Practical Action (ITDG). 2006. Employment in Sri Lanka: Post Tsunami Employment opportunities. Sri Lanka. Practical Action. Reconstruction and Development Agency (RADA), Report on the progress in Rebuilding Sri Lanka, 2006. Relief Web [online] [cited 16 September 2006]. Available from World Wide Web : <Http: www. Reliefweb.com/ press releases.html.> Sunday Observer, Non Governmental Organizations drives the way forward in Tsunami Assistance, 18th November 2006. Sirgy M.J and Samli A. C. 1995. New Dimensions in Marketing/Quality-of-Life Research. Westport, CT. Quorum Publications. Stephens D.C. 2000. The Maslow Business Reader. New York. Wiley Publications. Sultan K. 2005. Gurus on Managing People. London. Thorogood Publications.

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Tsunami Two Year Report, United Nations Country Team (UNCT), United Nations Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2006. Wijeratne W.D. (2006). Impact of emergence of Non Governmental Organizations after Tsunami, in the employment sector of Sri Lanka, Faculty of Arts, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.

About the Author

Chatura Pulasinghage I am Graduate from Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. I have a Bachelors degree in Agriculture from University of Peradeniya and a Masters Degree in Environment Economics from Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya. I am also a MSc candidate in University of Guelph and starting my studies in January 2009. My research interests are Environment Economics, Land Resource Economics and Food Economics. I am very interested in doing research which involves economics, environment and livelihoods. I like to find out the linkage between the poor environment resource management and the poverty and then to find out the policy implications to improve the situation. Currently I am working on two researches. First is to identify the implications of Anti-commons on the land resources of Sri Lanka, and the second is to identify the relationship of poverty, land use practices and the land ownership in Sri Lanka.

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