An Exploratory Study to understand Motivation factors of Care Givers who work in Orphanages/Old Age Homes on low salaries

By
Swati Maheshwari

Under the Guidance of
Prof. Tithi Bhatnagar

SCHOOL of INSPIRED LEADERSHIP
GURGAON

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………………………………3
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………....4
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………..5
Literature Review………………………………………………………………………………….……8
Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………………….11
Sample Particulars……………………………………………………………………………….11
Research Tool……………………………………………………………………………………11
Procedure……………………………………………………………………………………….12
Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………12
Discussion……………………………………………………………………………………………….15
Future Scope………………………………………………………………………………………….....17
Appendices…………………………………………………………………………………………….....18
References………………………………………………………………………………………………..19

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my humble gratitude to all those who gave me the opportunity to complete this research paper. I am deeply thankful to my guide/mentor Prof. Tithi Bhatnagar of School Of Inspired
Leadership for her constant help, stimulating suggestions and continuous encouragement which kept me motivated throughout in my research during the post graduate program.
I would like to extend my heartfelt obligation towards all the people who have helped me in this endeavor.
Without their active support, guidance and encouragement, I would not have been able to conduct this research. With immense gratitude I would also like to extend thanks to Prof. Neetika Batra, our Program Chair for her full support and guidance and for providing me this opportunity.
I extend my gratitude to SCHOOL OF INSPIRED LEADERSHIP for giving me this opportunity to learn about a new area of research and to explore my own capabilities in the research field.
Finally it is all to the almighty and my parents for their blessings and support that kept me motivated to follow the right path in my life.
Thanking You
SWATI MAHESHWARI
2016BLP050

Abstract

“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.”
― Lou Holtz

Objective: To explore the motivation factors which help these care givers keep on giving selfless constant service to elderly people of old age homes and small kids of orphanages that too on a bare minimum salary. Methods: This study has been done with clear and unbiased intentions to seek the motivating factors of these people. Samples from different Orphanages and Old Age Homes have been questioned using semistructured interview method and derived the common motivating factors coming out of the study.

Results: It was found that there are many intrinsic motivation factors like, compassion, empathy and sense of inner satisfaction helps a care givers in selflessly offer services involving love, care to people who are just strangers to them sacrificing their inner self.

Conclusion: It can be concluded from the study that there should be a balance of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation factor required for both organization and care givers to work together for the cause and mission and vision of the organization helping each other in reaching that goal of “Niswartha Sewa.”

Introduction
Motivation has been a favorite research topic for the qualitative researchers over past few decades.
Motivation is a spark that keeps you going even when the path is not at all easy to walk on and sometimes the only thing to motivate yourself is the smile you bring on the faces of others working hard day and night sacrificing everything. This is how each day of care givers who work with elderly people in old age homes and orphanages with under privileged kids goes, keeping themselves motivated to work for the happiness and well-being of these kids and elderly people. These care givers can’t work even a single day of their life without being motivated enough to serve others overlooking their own needs and desires. So, now the question is can motivation be strong enough to drive the fire in you to work for the happiness of others and not to think about yourself?
Motivation of a person working anywhere could be linked to 4 factors. One of the researchers (Brian
Tracy, 2014) defined these four factors as: (1) leadership style (2) the reward system (3) the organizational climate and (4) the structure of the work. Key factor in an employee’s motivation irrespective of role or organization he/she is working in is the leadership style of the leader leading the organization. In an NGO, tis factor becomes much more critical since employees need much more motivation to stay connected to the cause especially if that person is a care giver as the job requires nonstop efforts of whole day. Next is reward system. Since our childhood we are brought up in an environment where we associate outcome of each task with a reward. So, it’s a natural behavior of an individual to expect something in return to the hard work he/she is putting in. But often, it has been seen that NGO does not pay even a decent salary to care givers as these NGO’s are themselves fund deprived. Next factor is organization climate. Orphanage homes or old age homes are not a very fascinating place in itself to work for but for a person who can

associate himself/herself with these abundant small kids or elderly people who have been left alone by their grown up children at such a stage of their life where they need their children the most can only give them a proper care irrespective of what the organization environment is. Associating with these people creating an environment of love, care and happiness is what care givers work for. Lastly, structure of work plays an important role in care givers motivation as well. No human being could be completely selfless.
We all need a respect from our peers be it person working with you or from person for whom you are working for. In fact, care givers needs more respect in terms of giving them authority to have a say in anything they do. These people work for long shifts without taking break which make this fact more crucial that they been given proper respect and authority to feel connected with the cause and organization they are working for.
But as a matter of fact, it is evident that care givers are majorly low paid workers offering their time, services, effort and emotions to all those who are just strangers to them and going beyond their responsibilities to help them out. This aspect of service offered by them is beyond human comprehension and very inspiring.
Since, the above stated extrinsic factors does not seem much convincing factors contributing to motivation of these care givers so there has to be some intrinsic factors which helps these people in sticking to their services. There have been number of studies (Ferreria, Proenca & Joao, 2012) conducted on the intrinsic motivation focusing on the factors influencing self-motivation which drives inner self of the care givers to perform well even when the external factors are not conducive enough.
However, there has been studies which suggest that this service offered by care givers is not voluntarily but it’s merely a job that these people do to earn their living until they get a good paid job elsewhere. Most

studies also argue that this is purely done on the basis of altruism as a primary motive. But it seems as if these claims have been made to help organizations. For instance, if the study proved that the extrinsic motivation is largely required to drive care givers to achieve their objective then the organization would give this stimuli to help them achieve this objective. Hence, there is still a confusion so as to what truly drives the care givers to give their full into their actions and services.
So, there is a need of study regarding the actual secret behind the “selfless deed” which this study aspires to reveal. The study aims:


To explore what are the motivating factors catalysing the care givers will to work on bare minimum wages for under privileged kids in orphanages and for elderly people at old age homes



To make recommendations for organizations spot the rightly motivated person with pure intentions to offer services as care givers.

Literature Review
“Caregiver” is a term which is has been traditionally used in the Western countries. People in India always referred these people as “Care takers”. This was also a topic of debate for most researchers. Even going by dictionary meaning “caregiver n. orig. U.S. a person, typically either a professional or close relative, who looks after a child, elderly person, invalid, etc.; a carer. Caretaker n. a. One who takes care of a thing, place, or person; one put in charge of anything.” (Oxford English Dictionary). Lately, India has also adopted the word Care giver as it’s more humanitarian.
The literature suggests that there are intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors catalyzing the inner drive of care givers to work selflessly for people who are just a stranger to them. This selfless service of human kind is referred to as “Niswartha Sewa” in Hindu tradition since long ago. It is believed in the culture that by serving humanity one reaches salvation. Great saints have spoken about the same in their own diction and utterance. One of the greatest saints in the history of India, Swami Vivekananda, has spoken about the secret behind every action in an elaborate manner in his lifework collection called “Karma Yoga‟. He also says that there is a kind of action which does not bind people but liberate them and that is “Karma Yoga‟action leading to liberation.

Many scholars have studied the concept of voluntarily offering selfless service to mankind. One of the researches (Debbie Haski-Leventhal, 2009) attribute “altruism‟ (altruism from the Latin means “for the other”, caring for the “alter”) as the cause of selfless service while the other researchers claimed there are also egoistic motivations associated with this concept that it is not always white and clear but also that there are specks of black spots attached as well. Then studies were done on the two major motivations:

altruistic and egoistic. There were also arguments around not all actions can be altruistic and philosophers like Sigmund Freud claimed that any act for another will be considered altruistic if it benefits the recipient and harms the helper. If both gain from the interaction, then it is cooperation- not altruism. Monroe also defined it as “behaviour intended to benefit another, even when this risks possible sacrifice to the welfare of the actor.”
There are also studies (Ferreira, Proença and João. 2012) that claim that the feeling of giving back to society selflessly increases as people age and hence people tend to devote themselves for serving others more when they retire. Value defines the chance for a volunteer to express his or her own values, knowledge and abilities. Understanding states the opportunity of new learning experiences. Social defines the possibility to be with friends or to make new friends. Specifically, there are studies which posit development and learning (Ferreira, Proença, and João. 2012) as an important aspect of volunteers to involve in the work in NGOs. The motivations under this aspect are related with the learning process, new perspectives and the increase of experiences.

The researches done so far are in some way looking to find the root cause but somehow the root causes figured are for the purpose of banking on it or for making use of it to solely motivate the caregivers. This paper believes that caregivers should be intrinsically motivated (driven from within oneself) and need no extrinsic motivation because the word “caregiver‟ in itself mean working out of awareness, compassion and of a conscious choice made in the direction of their work towards human kind. The non-governmental organization or voluntary organization (as formerly called) is a body having goals that are primarily noncommercial and is free from the control of the government however it receives funds from the government.
In India, it was a culture that service to humanity would be service to God and so many were inspired to

offer selfless service to help people in need and trouble. It was perceived to be practiced purely on basis of religious and spiritual sentiments among the society. The reform movements in the 19th century initiated the formalization of these organizations.

Methodology

This section discuss about the sample, research tools used and procedures taken to carry out the study.
Sample Particulars:
Purposive Random Sampling technique has been used to carry out the research because it would cover the diversity in respondents varying in age, organization, marital status, gender and tenure of respondents.
Therefore, it would possibly avoid any kind of sampling error due to bias in the sampling. A sample of 10 respondents working as caregiver both from Orphanage and old age home have been selected though purposive random sampling. The sample comprised of particulars like age, organization, duration in the current organization and educational level.
Research Tool:
An interview approach has been used to explore the motivation factors of caregivers. Semi- structured questionnaire was developed by incorporating Open ended questions to obtain their insights about what they feel keep them motivated to offer their selfless service to human kind from the respondent. The questionnaire method enables us to find various factors upon which the research is focused. A list of questions is available in the Appendices section. For gathering the required data the respondents have been probed further for objective oriented results.

Procedure:
The data was collected using a purposive random sampling technique. The respondents were approached by the researcher and a rapport was built with them, providing them with a brief on what the research is about. Their consent on participation and other ethical considerations were taken. The respondents were then interviewed on the set of questions. Their interviews were recorded, transcribed and content analyzed.
Post the interview the respondents were thanked for their support.
Analysis:
The interviews were able to capture several interesting motivating aspects of working as caregiver in orphanages and old age homes caring selflessly for strangers trying to connect with them.
Table 1: Factor affecting Motivation of Caregivers

S. No

Determinants

n (Frequency)

1

Empathy

8

2

Compassion

5

3

Feeling of giving back to society

4

4

Need basis

4

5

Sense of connection

5

6

Inner satisfaction

7

7

External Motivation

6

8

Out of no choice

4

The first question was to seek respondent’s motivating factor for joining the NGO as caregiver and as it can be clearly seen from the table 8 respondents feel empathetic towards under privileged kids and elderly people which give them the motivation to work for them and offer their services. They feel connected to these people and this gives them inner satisfaction as already implied by 7 people in the table above. These respondents feel connected to the NGO they are working for and feels the mission and vision of their organization as their own. There were 4 people who are into their late 40’s or early 50’s who are working as care giver in the NGO’s because they feel in this way they can give something to society. 2 out of these people has been orphan themselves and thus want to give back what they have received from living in the orphanage themselves. Next question was to find out if the organization is providing enough extrinsic motivation to care givers to feel motivated enough to be associated with the cause they are in and as it can be clearly seen from the table above 6 people felt that extrinsic motivation is important for them to be associated for this cause and it was also reflected in their answers to this question. Most of them felt that their organization does not have any reward and recognition system which makes them demotivated to work for long hours. Next two questions were related to the demotivating factor involved in their work and salary offered and the responses were in line with whatever we inferred from response of the previous question as well. The shifts are pretty long. Sometimes they feel like as if they are working for 48 hours in 24 hours a day! Since, the number of care givers are always less than required in every organization so often care givers have to work twice their capacity and in return to selfless service the salary they get is not even justified. But then there were 3 people who feel they do not require a handsome salary to work for these kids and elderly people as they feel connected to these people. As per them the satisfaction derived after serving these people is their actual reward. These care givers require just a basic salary which could help them in meeting their daily requirement. When asked about if these care givers would like to

be associated with the cause on long term basis then as it can be inferred from table above there are 4 people who are just into offering service because they need money and 4 people also thought that they are doing this until they get any other job. These are the same people who think they are not getting paid enough and hence if they get an opportunity to earn more they would leave this organization.

Discussion
Every organization be it NGO serving under privileged kids or running old age homes or any other organization need people who serve the organization with a pure intentions of care and “Sewa Bhavna.”
If the care givers don’t feel aligned and connected towards the cause they would not be able to serve full heartedly and love and care would be compromised in that case. So, as much as it is important for organizations to impart whatever source of extrinsic motivation they could provide to these selfless service givers, it is as important for organization to employ people who feel empathetic and compassionate towards the people they are serving and also feel connected with the cause of the organization. People who have certain beliefs and values in life generally tend to feel compassionate about kids and elderly people and hence feel connected towards serving them selflessly and also feel themselves to be in line with the vision and mission of the organization. Though in today’s world it’s not easy to find such people who selflessly feels offering services with complete love and care towards strangers, so it’s important that once organization have such care givers with them they should know how to value these people. Both, caregiver and organization have to take care of each other’s need and work in synchronization to help each other towards working a common goal of serving people selflessly. Caregivers need to keep themselves self-motivated which is very crucial to serve the cause of “Sewa” but the value of extrinsic motivation cannot be neglected as the care givers are human being as well and they need money or rewards to fulfill their needs.
Organizations should conduct some time to time motivation enhancement programs for the care givers which could help them feeling motivated themselves to serve their cause. Also, there should be time to time reviewal of roles and responsibilities born by care givers so as to see if these people are not feeling

burned out because of work load. It has been seen very often, NGO’s do not have enough care givers as required by them because of which care givers feels overburdened and end up working twice their capacity which in turn result into frustration and thus they feel demotivated.

Future Scope
In terms of future scope, this study can be extended to care givers associated with other fields as well, for
e.g. medical field has lots of care givers involved working part time or full time taking care of patients and elderly people. It can also be extended in terms of volunteers working for different NGO’s and not just be limited to caregivers.
Another extension of the research could be the study of extrinsic factors and importance of them on the motivation of care givers on a larger sample size involving NGO’s associated with variety of causes.
Getting to interview a large number of samples reinforce the objective of the study and the framework can be refined accordingly with the new set of determinants and questions in correspondence to the determinants. APPENDICES

1. What is the most important motivating factor which keeps you connected to care giving services?

2. Do you think your organization is helping you in feeling connected with your work?

3. Do you feel demotivated about anything related to your work?

4. Do you think your organization pays you enough for your work?

5. Do you see your long term association with the care giver work or you don't want to continue with it in long term?

References
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Debbie Haski-Leventhal. (2009). Altruism and Volunteerism: The perceptions of altruism in four disciplines and their impact on the study of volunteerism, 7, 273-280
Renee Hotchkiss. (2007). Valuing Volunteers: The Impact of Volunteerism on Hospital
Performance
Marisa R. Ferreira, Teresa Proença, João F. Proença. (2012). Motivations Which Influence
Volunteers‟ Satisfaction 2, 3-5
Cousins William. (1991). The urban poor and basics infrastructure services in Asia and the
Pacific 1, 1
Swami Vivekananda, (2012). The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Retrieved from http://www.swamivivekanandaquotes.org/2014/05/nishkam-karma-of-bhagavad-gita.html http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5983/caretaker-vs-caregiver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory http://www.ijme.net/archive/3/the-intrinsic-motivation-to-teach.pdf- just read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation