District Information Officers Workshop 2009

Last Friday, 20 February 2009, I was invited to talk to about 40 District Information Officers from all districts throughout Sarawak. Schedules in the program, I was to give a kind of motivational talk to them. However lately, this sort of talk, especially to government civil service is a little bit a sensitive topic. Because, some may ponder; "Am I not motivated enough all these while?" Nevertheless, I found that they were all motivated, experienced and visionary. This was indicated by some responses they made during the interaction.

Centrally themed 'job satisfaction and building a career path to success', I began by asking what made them satisfied with their present job, a point I had always made when addressing the civil service. The notion that, satisfaction has always been contributed by such factors as pay, promotion, supervision, colleagues and workplace need reviewing. They may give some form of satisfaction but they may not be continuously motivating and satisfying to most people. In Malaysian civil service context, such factors continuous professional development and the nature of the 'work' one is attached to, contribute to long-term satisfaction.

I concluded professional satisfaction contributes to continuous motivation among most civil service officers. The implication is that employers need to constantly provide opportunities to employees to develop themselves.