Motivation in the workplace: using the right financial reward system in Indonesian public sector

INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is one the most populous nation in the world, which happen to sit in one the most dynamic region between Australia and Asian industrial countries like Japan, China and South Korea. With Asia and Australia nearby, Indonesia is trying to leverage its strategic position by building its economic capacity. As commonly seen in developing country, Indonesia’s public sector is seen as inadequately equipped to bolster development in Indonesia. As a way to increase its economic development, Indonesian government decided to initiate bureaucratic reform for its public employee. This bureaucratic reform is intended to improve public service, which is plagued by corruption (Wihantoro et al. 2015). It is expected that the improvement of public sector could lead to better service and good governance which in turn would improve people’s satisfaction. Despite the effort by the government of Indonesia, public service in Indonesian remains mediocre at best and there are still a lot of room for improvement in Indonesian public sector.
Traditionally the pay structure for civil servant in Indonesia is using membership-based and seniority based rewards, which does not lend itself well into motivating high performing employee. The bureaucratic reform then introduced the concept of job status-based rewards combined with seniority-based rewards in which civil servant still received regular wage like seniority-based system but then some government institutions like Ministry of Finance receive special allowance tied to their job status. However, despite the Government of Indonesia’s effort to do bureaucratic reform, motivation in the workplace still relatively low and there are still some room for improvements in public services. Of course, there are other factor that can