The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee motivation: A study on İBB Darulaceze Directorate

In today's business world, the main purposes of organizations are firstly to survive and then to keep their profitability at the highest level. Increasing competition forces organizations to take various steps for a sustainable performance. It is beyond doubt that organizational performance is strongly related with employee performance and motivation. Therefore, it has always been on the corporate agenda to investigate internal and external factors motivating workforce. As a strong external factor COVID-19 pandemic has clearly affected the whole world and caused social, cultural and economic changes in people's lives. In this study, it was aimed to examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee motivation. A quantitative research was conducted with the participation of 252 people working in the Istanbul Hospice Directorate. A questionnaire consisting of demographic information form, motivation and multidimensional COVID-19 scales was applied to the employees. The collected data were transferred to SPSS version 22.0, and analyzed after the necessary numerical coding and variable definitions. According to the results, emotions and behaviors related to COVID-19 have a significant and negative effect on motivation. On the other hand, the measures taken for COVID-19 have a significant positive impact on motivation. A statistically significant difference was found between the employees with different education levels in terms of thoughts about COVID-19 and measures taken for COVID-19.