Question

How can the public sector motivate its employees in the absence of financial incentives?

With regard to budgeting, how would you prioritize government spending?

Answer 1

Non-financial incentive are incentive which costs nothing or nominal cost too the employer. Public sector can motivate its employee in many other ways rather then financial incentives. Government can provide non-financial incentives such as social rewards and performance-based postings and promotions, which can be both cheaper and more effective than cash incentives. Other incentives can be award presentation in events which surely the best way to motivate not only the one employee who is receiving award but also to other for such recognition. Paid personal leaves for personal life/ family functions, flexible scheduling. Dinner with seniors or team dinners which helps in making everyone more comfortable with each other which leads to increase in productivity, helps in networking to the employees. Mentorship programs helps in creating learning culture, increase job satisfaction, reduce stress and anxiety, enhanced decision making and develop leadership skills. These are the few non-financial rewards which cost almost nothing to government but surely help in increase performance.

Budgeting is the process of creating a plan to spend your money. There are no easy answers on how to prioritize in allocating public expenditures across broad pillars and sectors. Sophisticated technical approaches can require a great deal of resources and even so are highly imperfect and can result in misleading conclusions. Simpler rules of thumb may work better. Judgment is called for. And inevitably political factors will be prominent. As per my opinion on spending by government, they must priorities the Security, human capital development then public infrastructure followed by general administration. Security includes Justice, National police and law enforcement, and Army. Human capital development includes Education, Health, Social protection, livelihood, culture, sports, media. Public infrastructure includes Railways, Roads, Transport, energy, mines, telecom, natural resource management and urban management. General administration includes trade and investment, public administration and economic management.