Professional motivation and job satisfaction of personnel of state penitentiary service of Ukraine

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Professional motivation and job satisfaction of personnel of state penitentiary service of Ukraine

Doctor of History, associate professor, The Academy of the State Penitentiary Service, 34, Honcha Str., Chernihiv, Ukraine,

Ruslan Valieiev, PhD (Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences), Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs, 26, Haharina Str., Dnipro, Ukraine,

Yevhen Zozulia, Doctor of Law, associate professor, Donetsk Legal Institute of Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, 21, Stepana Tilhy Str., Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine

Annotation

professional motivation employee satisfaction

The paper aims to examine the peculiarities ofprofessional motivation and job satisfaction of the employees of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine (SPSU). A special psychodiagnostic toolkit was used in the study, in particular, Personality Motivational Profile by S. Ritchie and P. Martin to measure twelve needs in the field of professional motivation of the respondents, as well as the Job Satisfaction Survey developed by P. Spector, aimed at measuring the state of job satisfaction. According to the results, the main psychological peculiarities of work in the penitentiary system involve the awareness of its low prestige, the conditions of physical isolation, opposition to the criminal subculture, overload, etc. With the help of The Personality Motivational Profile, we have found that the most expressed need of the SPSU employees in the field of work is the need for money and tangible rewards, the need for work structure. The least pronounced are the need for creativity at work, the need for power and influence. Using the technique of measuring job satisfaction with Paul Spector's Survey, it has been found that the greatest satisfaction the employees get from their colleagues, the significance of their work, and the least one - from rewards for the quality of work and additional benefits. The carried out correlation analysis between every of the 12 needs in the professional field and the gender, age, work experience and job position of the SPSU staff has shown a correlation relationship between the need for recognition and age, and between the need for self-development.

Keywords: state penitentiary service of Ukraine, professional motivation, job satisfaction, personality motivational profile, measurement of job satisfaction.

Анотація

Володимир Пекарчук,

доктор історичних наук, доцент, Академія Державної пенітенціарної служби, вул. Гонча 34, м. Чернігів, Україна,

Руслан Валєєв, кандидат педагогічних наук, Дніпропетровський державний університет внутрішніх справ, проспект Гагаріна, 26, м. Дніпро, Україна,

Євген Зозуля, доктор юридичних наук, доцент, Донецький юридичний інститут МВС України, вул. Степана Тільги, 21, м. Кривий Ріг, Україна

Професійна мотивація та стан задоволеності роботою працівників державної кримінально-виконавчої служби України

Реформування державної служби в Україні передбачає поступове формування персоналу, спроможного переорієнтуватись з контрольних і репресивних функцій на сервісні. Вирішення цього довготривалого завдання неможливе без психологічного вивчення різних аспектів професійної мотивації державних службовців та кандидатів на службу. Особливої актуальності це завдання набуває стосовно персоналу державної кримінально-виконавчої служби, оскільки умови їхньої професійної діяльності містять низку стресогенних факторів. Мета статті - визначити особливості професійної мотивації та стан задоволеності роботою працівників Державної кримінально-виконавчої служби України (ДКВСУ). У дослідженні використано теоретичні методи аналізу та узагальнення наукової літератури, присвяченої проблемам формування та функціонування мотиваційної сфери психіки, професійної мотивації та психологічного супроводу функціонування державної кримінально - виконавчої служби, а також спеціальний психодіагностичний інструментарій. Зокрема, використано методику «Мотиваційний профіль особистості» Ш. Річчі та П. Мартіна для вимірювання дванадцяти потреб у сфері професійної мотивації працівників ДКВСУ. Також використано методику Job Satisfaction Survey, розроблену П. Спектором, для вимірювання стану задоволеності роботою працівників ДКВСУ. Для обробки результатів вимірювання використано методи математичної статистики. Згідно з результатами, основними психологічними особливостями здійснення службової діяльності персоналом пенітенціарної системи визначено усвідомлення невисокої престижності власної праці, умови фізичної ізоляції, відомий ступінь протистояння кримінальній субкультурі, залучення до понаднормової роботи тощо. За допомогою методики мотиваційного профілю особистості Ш. Річі та П. Мартіна було визначено, що найбільш вираженою потребою працівників ДКВСУ у сфері професійної діяльності є потреба у винагородах, у структуруванні роботи. Найменш вираженими є потреби у креативності на роботі, потреба у владі та впливовості. За допомогою методики вимірювання задоволеності роботою Пола Спектора встановлено, що найбільшу задоволеність працівники ДКВСУ відчувають від колег, значимості своєї роботи, а найменшу - від винагород за якість роботи та додаткових пільг. Найбільш чуткими до індивідуальних особливостей працівників ДКВСУ виявились потреби у винагородах, належних умовах праці, а також стан задоволеності керівництвом та інформуванням у конкретному підрозділі, за якими зафіксовано найбільше стандартне відхилення. Кореляційний аналіз між кожною з 12 потреб у професійній сфері та статтю, віком, стажем та рядовим/керівним рівнем посади працівників ДКВСУ виявив певну кореляцію між потребою у визнанні та віком та між потребою у самовдосконаленні та статтю.

Ключові слова: Державна кримінально-виконавча служба України, професійна мотивація, стан задоволеності роботою, мотиваційний профіль особистості, вимірювання стану задоволеності роботою

Ukraine is now experiencing a large-scale and painful parting with many post-Soviet syndromes. The reforming of the civil service and the authorities involves their fundamental reorientation from control, repressive functions to service tasks. The fundamental changes in the organization and functioning of state institutions should be based on a set of prerequisites, including updating the staff and working with it. Such an update involves psychological monitoring of professional staff motivation. The awareness of the relevance of this issue is determined by the study of work motivation carried out in recent years.

In particular, the issues of labour psychology, including motivational ones, were generalized by G. Lozhkin and his coauthors; O. Husak studied the influence of motives on the quality of work, and V. Dukhnevych examined psychological well-being of a professional. Psychology of professional competence was studied by V. Bodrov. T. Frantseva designed a questionnaire for the diagnosis of motives of work (Frantseva, 2010). O. Mahlai and V. Lopata developed psychosemantic di agnostics of the motivation of officers to work, O. Shovhelia studied theoretical and practical aspects of motivation of civil servants. A lot of foreign experts examined motivational principles of the civil service (Perry et al., 1990).

It is worth noting that these research works were based on the studies of the personality motivational sphere carried out by Hans Heckhausen, Abraham Maslow and other well-known scholars. They have made it possible to distinguish such a phenomenon as job satisfaction. It has been the focus of researchers in the western countries for a long time. Thus, according to experts' research as of 1995, more than 12 thousand job satisfaction surveys have been carried out in the world (Roy et al., 2012). Some of them are worth regarding, the conclusions of which we used in the present study. R. Dawis and his colleagues designed A Psychological Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis, 1984) and developed the so-called Minnesota Studies in Vocational Rehabilitation. In 1968, Frank Herzberg developed a Two-Factor Theory of Job Satisfaction (Herzberg, 2007). Many researchers tested it in practice using the Paul Spector's Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1998). To some extent, the Two-Factor Theory of Herzberg has influenced the development of Job Characteristics Model (Hackman et al., 1975).

The phenomenon of job satisfaction in Ukraine was investigated by a lot of researches, for example, O. Laz- erko, L. Petrova. The study of job satisfaction as an indicator of employees' neuroticism should be emphasized (Shcherbakova, 2015). In the post-Soviet space, researchers actively offer specially designed author's methods for studying job satisfaction. In particular, T. Ivanova, N. Bolotina compared different toolkits and then developed their own one. Experts also investigated the subjective factors of job satisfaction of organizations employees (Vecherin, 2011).

Among recent achievements of far-abroad countries the following ones are worth attention: the study of the relationship of job satisfaction and psychosomatic illness in Nigeria prison staff (Ofili et al., 2016); comparison of the state of job satisfaction of public and private sector employees carried out by Greek experts (Tsigilis et al., 2006), the study of the impact of aggressive leadership on the state of job satisfaction of healthcare workers in Pakistan (Ahmad et al., 2016); factors that determine stress and job satisfaction of medical staff in Australia (Bartram, 2004).

Among a wide range of state institutions that are currently being reformed, professional motivation of employees of the penitentiary service requires special attention. This, in particular, is due to the cardinal nature of changes, as well as a number of specific factors that increase the risk of neuroticism, imparting helplessness, emotional burnout, professional deviation, deformation and degradation of the staff institutional bodies and institutions for the execution of criminal punishment and probation.

The understanding of the complexity of professional conditions of the prison workers, as well as the importance and urgency of the reforms of the relevant institutions and bodies, has preconditioned the conduction of a number of researches in recent years. For example, psychological peculiarities of the organization of future employees of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine (hereinafter - SPSU) were investigated (Shamruk, 2015).

The assessment of the impact of job satisfaction, work-related stress, and anxiety in prison staff was performed by T. Byrd and his co-authors (Byrd et al., 2000). In the United States, experts have assessed the impact of prison security on job satisfaction and the burnout of workers in the penitentiary system (Roy et al., 2012). The dissertation research on job satisfaction factors in correctional officers of the US District Prisons is also worth considering (Simmons, 2017).

Some aspects of job satisfaction of prison workers were investigated by E.G. Lambert et al., 2002, E.A. Paoline III et al., 2017, R. Kalra et al., 2016, but there are no studies dealing with professional motivation and job satisfaction of prison officers in Ukraine and post-soviet countries.

Consequently, we can conclude that there is a contradiction between the urgent need for further reformation of the SPSU with the provision of psychological support and monitoring of professional motivation and job satisfaction of the officers, and between a certain scientific ignoring of studies dedicated to professional motivation of employees of relevant institutions and their job satisfaction in Ukraine.

Aim and Tasks

Taking into account the above, the paper aims to find out peculiarities of professional motivation and job satisfaction of the SPSU staff. To achieve the goal, the following tasks are set:

1) to study psychological peculiarities and conditions of SPSU officers' work and similar structures in other countries.

2) to select methods suitable for distinguishing the peculiarities of professional motivation and the state of job satisfaction, and to carry out corresponding measurements.

3) using mathematical methods, interpret the results of the study, paying attention to the possible correlation relationships between the needs in the professional field of prison workers and the state of their job satisfaction.

Research Methods

The research is based on theoretical methods of analysis and generalization of scientific literature on the issue of the formation and functioning of the motivational sphere of the psyche, problems of professional motivation and psychological support of the functioning of penitentiary institutions, as well as special psychodiagnostic tools. In particular, Sheila Ritchie and Peter Martin “Personality Motivational Profile” technique was applied to assess the importance of twelve needs in the field of professional motivation of the SPSU staff. Also, Job Satisfaction Survey developed by Paul Spector was used to measure nine job satisfaction factors. For the processing of results, we used the StatSoft Statistica software package, methods of mathematical statistics, in particular: the definition of the median, quartiles, modes, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, data ranging, analysis of the normality of their distribution, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The sample was composed of 60 people aged from 18 to 38 (43 men and 17 women) who work in penitentiary institutions of 6 regions of Ukraine. 10 people had managerial positions and 50 respondents had nonleadership jobs.

Research Results

According to European penitentiary rules, penitentiary staff perform an important social function, and therefore the order of their recruitment, training, and working conditions should enable them to maintain high standards for the treatment of prisoners (italics - made by the authors). Instead, domestic experts have investigated a number of deprivation and frustration factors that accompany the work of the penitentiary system employees. Firstly, this is high psycho-emotional stress due to prolonged contact with the criminogenic microenvironment (Popyk, 2011) and the need to resist the values of the criminal subculture, and secondly, the consideration of the non-prestige of the profession (Prykhodko, 2011). Specifically, before the beginning of the reforms, experts stated that “90% of mid-level prison officials consider work with convicts not to be prestigious” (Bohatyrev, 2012. The parliamentary ombudsman noted that, that “the work in the penitentiary system, in comparison with other state structures, remains one of the most unprivileged” (Bodnarchuk, 2012). Thirdly, researchers emphasize the isolation of work conditions, in fact “employees of penitentiary institutions are prisoners of their work” (Prikhodko, 2011). Specialists note the physical burden of the work performed (Popyk, 2011), high requirements for the level of organization of prison staff (Shamruk, 2015), their psycho-pedagogical training (Denysova, 2014).

Experimental research (Chychuha, 2015) has shown that even in the workers of psychosocial service of penitentiary institutions such destructive mental states and qualities as personal anxiety, fear, neuro-psychological instability, especially in extreme conditions, tension, suspicion, cruelty, isolation, are found. At the same time, labour psychologists recognized that professional deformation begins with negative changes in the level of workers' emotional sphere functioning (Shcherbakova, 2015).

It should be noted that these negative stress factors are inherent in penitentiary systems in developed countries. In particular, E.G. Lambert and E.A. Paoline (2008) regard work in correctional institutions as a depressing activity, which is unvalued by the society. Scientists emphasize the endless circle, when working conditions in prisons cause feelings of anxiety and professional burnout in workers, which in turn results in personnel turnover (Byrd, 2000; Lambert, 2004 and 2010; Castle, 2008, etc.). In turn, a permanent shortage of personnel leads to chronic overtime work, vacation time misuse (Leib et al.,2012, which increases the negative impact on the motivation of corrections officers.

Along with that, E.G. Lambert and E.A. Paoline state that prison officials who are satisfied with their work and are free from stress effectively perform tasks of the correctional institution, and vice versa, dissatisfied and stressed employees can cause a penitentiary institution collapse (Lambert et al., 2008).

At the same time, according to experts, the increase of the level of job satisfaction in district prison officials is considered an important way to decrease the issues of stress, burnout and high turnover rates (Griffin, 2001).

Job satisfaction of prison officials is important because it prevents staff turnover and, accordingly, ensures their continuity, which in turn “can provide safe environment inside the jail for all staff and inmates” (Simmons, 2017).

Taking into account these negative factors of penitentiary institutions personnel's work, the low level of their job satisfaction is not surprising. In Nigeria, 54.4% of prison staff are dissatisfied with their work (Ofili et al., 2016), while some studies in the United States recorded up to 80% of penitentiary institutions workers who were satisfied with their job (Leip et al., 2013).

Consequently, the main psychological peculiarities of penitentiary system workers' service are their awareness of the low prestige of their job, the conditions of physical isolation, the confrontation with the criminal subculture, overtime work, rather strict regulation of service, high requirements for psychological readiness and stress-resistance.

The second task of our study involved selecting methods suitable for examining characteristics of professional motivation and the state of job satisfaction. We believe that The Two-Factor Theory (also known as Her- zberg's motivation-hygiene theory) is worth considering. First, methodologically, it is based on humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and his pyramid of needs, upon whose main provisions we agree. Secondly, we see parallels with studies of the motivational sphere in domestic psychology, many of which tend to assess internal and external motivation, and in the two-factor theory of F. Herzberg, factors-motivators rely on internal motivation, and hygiene factors can be considered as external stimuli. Thirdly, foreign psychologists have developed and tested a number of reliable diagnostic tools suitable for measuring corresponding indicators, in particular, Paul Spector's Job Satisfaction Survey.

F. Hertzberg's theory emphasizes the binary opposition of job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction, and the variety of factors influencing their level, distinguishing those ones that primarily affect job satisfaction - the so- called motivators, and those factors that primarily affect job dissatisfaction - the so-called hygienic factors (hence the name “Two-Factor Theory”). Paul Spector's Survey helps to measure nine different aspects of job satisfaction (both motivational and hygienic factors) - satisfaction with earnings, career opportunities, leadership, additional benefits, rewards for the quality of work, lack of bureaucratic barriers at work, colleagues, the importance of work, etc.

We consider the “Motivational Profile” by Sheila Ritchie and Peter Martin to be the most appropriate tool for examining peculiarities of professional motivation. It helps to measure twelve basic personal needs in the professional field, which are to some extent relevant to the motivational and hygienic factors identified by F. Hertzberg and the scales of P. Spector's survey. The method of S. Ritchie and P. Martin makes it possible to measure the importance of twelve needs in the field of professional motivation of the individual: the need for rewards, appropriate working conditions, work structuring, social contacts, relationships, recognition, achievements, power and influence, diversity, creativity, selfperfection, interesting and useful work.

Empirical Study Results

The survey of employees of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine was carried out during November 2017 on the basis of the Chernihiv Academy of State Penitentiary Service. The ranking of the measured needs of the employees in the field of work (by comparing the median of different scales of the person's motivational profile) indicates a fairly even distribution of the preferences of the respondents for all needs other than the leader's scale (Figure 1). Thus, the medians of 11 scales areranging from 24 to 33 (37.5% difference), and the obvious leader - the need for rewards - has a median of 43 points, while the median of all other scales is 29 (the difference is 48.3%, and compared with the lowest median difference of 79.2%).

Instead, the ranking of various factors of satisfaction tween the maximum and the minimum median in 2.19 with the work of the staff of the SPSU (Figure 2) indi- times. cates a lack of a dominant factor and the difference between the maximum and the minimum median in 2.19 times.

Analyzing the descriptive statistics of the results of the motivational profile measurement, we observe the highest standard deviation according to the following scales: money and tangible rewards (16.85), physical condition (12.9) and work structure (12.8), which turnedout to be the most sensitive to individual characteristics of the employees. It should be noted that during the testing, some respondents have not given a single point to such factors of professional motivation as “money and tangible rewards”, “psycial condition”, “people contact”, only 1 point (from potential 132 points) was assigned to the “power and influence” scale, and 2 points - the “relationship” scale.

Analyzing descriptive statistics of job satisfaction state, the highest standard deviation (5.49) was observed concerning satisfaction with authorities, which is explained by subjective factors, the state of satisfaction with information provision (4.38), which is also explained by the peculiarities of the organization of working conditions in a particular subdivision.

Using the StatSoft Statistica package, we processed descriptive statistics and determined the distribution of data according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and ShapiroWilk tests, respectively. In particular, the distribution of data on the general state of job satisfaction is shown in figure 3. According to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, d = 0.05, p> 0.20, and according to the Shapiro-Wilk test W = 0.98, p = 0.62

The distribution of data for individual scales of personality motivational profile is shown in Figure 4. Although the data have a certain asymmetry, they are within the normal distribution.

We performed a correlation analysis between each of the 12 needs that are part of the personality motivational profile, and gender, age, work experience, and level of the respondent's position (Table 1). A correlation (see figure5) is found only between the need for recognition and age (Spearman's correlation coefficient is 0.26 at p = 0.04) and between the need for self-improvement and gender (Spearman's correlation coefficient is 0.26 at p = 0.045)

During the correlation analysis of the general motivational profile and the corresponding needs, we observed a certain correlation between the need for interest and usefulness of work and the personality motivation profile (r = 0.45 at p = 0.000). In this case, the highest negative correlation is observed between the need for rewards and the general motivation profile (r = -0.22 at p = 0.08).

A multiple regression analysis of the contribution of every factor to the general state of job satisfaction has also been conducted. It turned out that the greatest influence on the state of job satisfaction is satisfaction with the state of information provision (P = 0.81) and satisfaction from rewards for the quality of work (P = 0.78).

Discussion

Previously, in Ukraine, the study aimed at identifying needs in the professional field of the employees of the State Emergency Service was conducted (Popov, 2014). Among them, the need for rewards (average value 50.9 - 51.3), need for recognition (42.9 - 45.2), need for achievements (40.8 - 42.3), need for interesting and useful work (35.9 - 37) are of greatest significance. In our results, there is also a large gap between rewards (mean value is 44.9) and other needs (mean value is 28.9). At the same time, V. Popov has found differences in the ranking of individual needs in the subjects with experience up to 5 years and more, while in our study, the relevant differences are not statistically significant. We explain this by the fact that his study involved more people having more than 5 years' experience.

Our research outcomes are in line with E.G. Lambert et al., 2004. We have found that female prison officials have a higher level of job satisfaction than male ones (108.4 points vs 105). We have not find any statistically significant differences in the level of general satisfaction and factors, its components, between groups that differ in educational level, as well as O. Vecherin (2011).

In the study of T. Vezhnovets (2017), there is no correlation relationship between the job satisfaction and gender. However, it has been revealed that with the increase of the respondents' age, the level of satisfaction is increasing as well, while in our study this correlation is insignificant (0.04). This is due to the significant differences in the conditions and the nature of the work of the prison and medical staff, investigated by her. She has also found that 65.5% of doctors are satisfied with their job, while in our research, about 41.7% of the employees are satisfied with their job (if 109 points are considered to be the boundary value of P. Spector's survey). This is explained by the differences in the conditions and nature of work, as well as the use of different techniques that differ in terms of the level of job satisfaction.

According to some studies (Frantsev, 2010), positive correlation has been found between the scale of interesting work and relationships, working conditions and recognition, interesting work and recognition. However, in our study, no significant correlations have been observed between these needs, and the correlation between the latter scales in general is negative. These differences are explained by various methods used and various spheres of the respondents' employment.

Conclusions

1. The main psychological peculiarities of SPSU employees' job involve the awareness of its low prestige, the conditions of physical isolation, confrontation to the criminal subculture, overtime work, etc.

2. Among methods suitable for diagnosing the peculiarities of the professional motivation of the prison officials, we have selected the method of the personality motivational profile, which allows measuring twelve basic personal needs in the professional field. Concerning the methods appropriate for examining the state of job satisfaction the Job Satisfaction Survey by P. Spector, which measures nine different factors, was applied.

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2. Perry, J. L., & Wise, L. R. (1990). The motivational bases of public service. Public administration review, 367-373.

3. Roy, S., & Avdija, A. (2012). The effect of prison security level on job satisfaction and job burnout among prison staff in the USA: an assessment. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 7 (2), 524.

4. Dawis, R. V., & Lofquist, L. H. (1984). A psychological theory of work adjustment: An individual differences model and its application. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

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