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How Benefits and Outside Influences Affect

Employee Productivity

University of Central Florida 2026

June 13th, 2023

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Introduction

Although there are outside influences that can have an impact on employee productivity

rates, monetary and non-monetary benefits are the main factors that determine the output of

employee productivity. This is due to monetary benefits giving employees the extra incentive

they need to put forth more effort and inturn being more productive; this is the same case with

non-monetary benefits due to them causing an increase in employee morale and loyalty. With

this being said, monetary benefits are the most common form of rewards for paid employees, and

usually come in the form of a salary, bonuses, stock options, etc.. However, non-monetary

benefits are also very common in workplaces due to these rewards having little or no financial

cost to the company, and tend to be in the form of appreciation, gifts, time off, fringe benefits,

etc.. Although both of these respective types of incentives can have an impact on employee

productivity, there are also outside factors that can have strong influences. These influences

include but are not limited to factors such as education level, training, health, technology, etc..

Furthermore, with these three categories that affect productivity levels now given a brief

description, readers can be given an idea of who would be inquiring about such information and

what is yet to be discovered. Such groups who would focus on this type of material would be

companies and individuals in upper managerial positions to see how best to motivate their

employees/subordinates. Likewise, to these companies and certain individuals, my focus is

sorting through research studies and other sources collected data to determine what incentives or

outside influences have the largest impact on employee productivity. My educated guess based

on currently gathered data is that monetary incentives will display the largest factor in

determining an employees motivation and overall productivity levels.

Review of Literature
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Throughout this section readers will be given some insight into the sources I gathered and

reviewed to synthesize new information on the influences of employee productivity. Two such

sources that target specifically the monetary benefits impact are “Wages Equal Fact or Fiction?”

by Johannes Biesebroeck, and “Compensation and Incentives in the Workplace” by Edward

Lazear. Both of these respective studies go into depth about the impact of financial rewards on

employees productivity levels. Moreover, they provide sufficient data that shows a positive

correlation between motivation and monetary incentives, leading them to assume monetary

benefits have the largest impact on employee productivity. This data is useful in backing my

hypothesis that monetary benefits play the biggest role in productivity levels and provides a

solidified foundation to build off of. Moreover, another two sources that will play a vital role

throughout the research paper are, “Effect of Non-Monetary Rewards on Productivity of

Employees Among Selected Government Parastatals in ABIA State, Nigeria” by Okwudili

Emerole, and the Ted Talk, The Puzzle of Motivation, by Dan Pink. These two sources provide

support for the non-monetary incentive perspective, due to one analyzing the positive effects of

such incentives being used and the other giving a non-monetary method that has been proven to

work via a study of 51 companies. These perspectives are key due to them going against my

current hypothesis by providing data that supports the opposition claim that non-monetary

rewards have a bigger influence on employee productivity. Furthermore, the next two sources

that will be targeting outside influences on productivity are, “What's Driving the New Economy:

The Benefits of Workplace Innovation” by Sandra Black and Lisa Lynch, and “The Value of

Worker Well-Being” by Jerome Adams. These respective studies highlight the outside factors

that could have direct or indirect impacts on employee productivity. This information provided

through these sources are important due to all possible influences needing to be accounted for
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and brought to the reader's attention. Overall, each perspective provided via the sources will help

in the cultivation of new information that could prove if monetary or non-monetary incentives

play the biggest influence on employee productivity levels.

Aims and Objectives

The general goal of this research paper will be to provide businesses and upper

managerial individuals with information on benefits and outside factors that influence employee

productivity levels. This information will pertain specifically to monetary and non-monetary

incentives and outside factors which could have an impact on productivity. The secondary goal is

to to prove the hypothesis that monetary benefits have more of a sway on employee productivity

than non-monetary benefits. Overall, this research paper is directed towards individuals

interested in learning how to influence their employees productivity levels through two different

types of incentives and how outside factors can impact productivity.

Research Question

Do monetary or non-monetary benefits have more of an impact on employee

productivity, and how do outside factors have an influence? This question is aimed at the main

topic of the research paper, and is connected to the thesis and hypothesis that were previously

stated.

Works Cited
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Adams, Jerome M. “The Value of Worker Well-Being.” Sage Journals, 2019,

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0033354919878434.

Biesebroeck, Johannes V. “Wages Equal Productivity Fact Or Fiction?” NBER, 2003,

www.nber.org/papers .

Black, Sandra E, and Lisa M Lynch. “What’s Driving the New Economy: The Benefits

Of Workplace Innovation.” NBER, 2000, www.nber.org/papers .

Emerole, Okwudili B. Effect of Non-Monetary Rewards on Productivity of ... - IOSR

Journals, 2015,

iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Vol17-issue2/Version-4/B017240611.pdf.

Lazear, Edward P. Compensation and Incentives in the Workplace, 2018,

pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.32.3.195.

Pink, Dan, director. The Puzzle of Motivation. YouTube, YouTube, 25 Aug. 2009,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y . Accessed 30 May 2023.