E-training and development, motivation and employee performance among academicians: Case study of academicians in UniMAP

The purpose of this study is to examine the e-learning and development; motivation and job performance among academicians in Universiti Malaysia Perlis. The finding of this study has shown that e-learning and development is the key factor in enhancing job performance among academicians. The other finding was e-learning and development was also seen as a tool to motivate academicians in producing better quality work.


Introduction
Malaysia has four kinds of higher education providers. They are the public universities, private universities, polytechnics and community colleges. Each kind of higher education providers serve particular needs to the improvement of the country.
Academicians in universities comprises of seven categories, which are Professor, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer, Lecturer, Tutor, Language Instructor and Teaching Engineer. According to Sidek, Dora, Kudus and Hassan (2012), higher education institutions are now confronting on new values and changes in issues of the criteria (quality) of academicians in fitting job positions, job tasks and job performance of academician. According to Hanapi and Nordin (2014), academicians have to be the precedents and models to the students. Hence, lecturers ought to have great characters showing positive personalities with excellent academic background, good in communication skills as well as professionally and socially competent. Wilkesmann and Schmid (2014), stated three main tasks of academicians are teaching, research and administration. Meanwhile, Kaur (2011) concluded academicians are those who skilfully practiced certain standard of teaching and learning method within several structured method in delivering module with the aim of embedding the self-learning and self-outsourcing materials on student's learning skills.
Hence, educational institutions were increasingly aware that successful human resource policies and practices were the solutions in improving academician's job performance quality and productivity which resulted positive student's self-development and academic performance in class (Brown, 2004;2005;Batt, 2002;Becker & Huselid, 1998).
Therefore, Hackman and Oldham (1980) reported that work qualities of academicians such as skills in teaching and learning methods, research activities and academic management or performance were strongly related to stress and other negative psycho emotional dimensions which have detrimental impact on academician's motivation, performance and satisfaction at work. The findings were also supported by Chen, Tsui and Farh (2002) who elaborated on the importance of organizational support, leadership styles, and human resource management practices in improving job satisfaction and increasing job skills.

1.1
Problem statement Academic staff is playing an important role in nation because they are the people who cultivate and educate the future generation. Thus, it is vital for academician to fit in certain standard of quality as it was associated with the student's performance in higher institution (Hamid, Hassan and Ismail, 2012). Therefore, there were issues faced by the higher education institutions on poor employee performance, requests and desires for parents, declining nature of education, non-seriousness of students, and overwhelming task on lecturers (Asrar-ul-Haq, Anwar and Hassan, 2017).
Subsequently, many researches has proven that poor employee performance, employee turnover, employee absenteeism and employee stress are the negative impact for not having conducive positive environment, good organization facilities including proper training given to the employee (Hanapi and Nordin (2014).
Even there were researches done on the influence of training and development, motivation and work discipline towards employee performance; but few studies were being carried out concerning the employee performance focusing on e-training in higher education sector.
Therefore, this research aimed in analysing the need and impact of e-training and development on employee performance and motivation among academicians in UniMAP, Perlis.

1.2
Research questions 1. What are the connections between e-training and development; and employee performance among academicians in UniMAP, Perlis? 2. What are the level of motivation and employee performance among academicians in UniMAP, Perlis?

1.3
Objectives of the study i. To determine the views of e-training and development; motivation and employee performance among academicians in UniMAP, Perlis. ii. To investigate the relationships between e-training and development; and employee performance among academicians in UniMAP, Perlis. iii. To investigate the relationships between motivation and employee performance among academicians in UniMAP, Perlis.

1.4
Hypotheses of the study H a1: There are significant relationships between e-training and development; and employee performance among academicians. H a2 : There are significant relationships between motivation and employee performance among academicians. Ha3: There are significant relationships between e-training and development; and motivation among academicians.

1.5
Significant of the study Firstly, the outcome of this study will be the window of knowledge in understanding the impact of etraining and development on the performance of academicians. Secondly, the finding of this study can enriched the field of knowledge in e-training and development literature.

1.6
Limitation of the study There were several limitations faced in conducting this study. Firstly, the questionnaires distributed by email were mostly ignored and thus, reducing the numbers of respondents in this research. Secondly, there were the risks of getting superficial and inaccurate answers as variables studied concerned on their career performance and the organization where the respondent works.

Employee performance
According to Anitha and Kumar (2016), employee performance refers to the knowledge, skills and ability of employees to perform a job in an effective and efficient way in order to enhance good work practice skills with the aim of producing quality work. Meanwhile, Campbell, McCloy, Oppler and Sager (1993) concluded employee performance are the activities and actions which were being practiced by the employees that suits the organizational goals and being executed and performed to achieved certain personal gained objectives as well as achieving the vision and mission of the organization that they worked for.

Training (e-training) and development 2.2.1 Training
Training and development are any specific practice of knowledge and hands-on work using certain method and standard procedure with the aim to be skilled and knowledgeable in any field or work (Swanson &Holton, 2001 andTahir et al., 2014). Thus, training in any work areas can be a tool of change in employee's behaviour and as a booster to employee's motivation in enhancing knowledge, skills performance as well as organizational as a whole, Opatha (2009).

E-training
According to Ellis & Kuznia (2014) and Ramayah, (2012), e-training is the advance way of teaching and learning method (channel) for career professionals via information technology tools as it has the advantage of reaching more participant, requires shorter effective time of training, the mobility of training and the potential of being globally accessible by anyone to join in (as it uses the internet facilities).
Most practice and effective type of training were being done using the video conferencing and web based training as seen in the youtube and any other e-service training platforms. Quoted by Mohsin & Sulaiman (2013), and Chen (2008), most organizations uses e-training aided tools such as web-based, computer-based (CDROM), and video/audio tapes. Nowadays, in exchange of traditional medium of printing materials organizations preferred to e-text, eBooks, e-zines. The same with video base training such as streaming video, video tape, satellite transmission, cable and audio training like streaming audio, audio tape. There were even changes in e-nature of reviews and exams using electronic, interactive, paper. Communication tools via asynchronous, threaded discussions, weblogs, forums or synchronous-chat using videoconferencing, and teleconferencing.

Motivation
Motivation is a drive of doing something as to appease the self-need of individual because of certain reward (Robin & Couler, 2005). It is also define by specific act to engage in certain situation to get something in return (Mitchell, 1982 &Broussard andGarrison, 2004).

Theory of Employee Performance
Performance is an act or process in which a task, an action, a duty is carried out. Employee performance is a contracted person performs his tasks and responsibilities well in an organization. This includes the input of resources and time, implementation and achievement of results to produce goods and services. Performance is the key factor to success in the organization.
On the other hand, productivity is the measurement of output units divided by input units when an employee carries out a task or job (Chew, 1988). Productivity measures the relationship between outputs such as produced goods and services and inputs including materials, labour, capital and other resources. Even though employee performance and employee productivity are two distinct terms, performance and productivity are interchangeably used in this study.

Location, population, respondent and sampling technique
This study was conducted in Universiti Malaysia of Perlis (UniMAP). The population of study were the academicians who is working with UniMAP. This study uses non-probability sampling technique.

3.2
Research approach This is a quantitative study which uses self-build questionnaire in examining the e-training and development, motivation and performance of academicians in UniMAP.

3.3
Research design This study has two phases in collecting data. The first phase is the pilot test in acquiring the cronbach alpha of each of the dimensions in the questionnaire. Second phase is the actual collection of data in scaling and examining the e-training and development, motivation and performance. Thus, this research focuses on descriptive and correlational study in examining the e-training and development; motivation and performance of academicians in UniMAP.

3.4
Self-build questionnaire Questionnaire was divided into two sections. Section A collected information on socio demographic profile of the respondent such as school and category. Meanwhile, section B collects the data on training and development; motivation and employee performance. All items build in these three dimensions based on the criteria sets by    Table 4 shows the total number of respondents in each category of academician schemes in UniMAP. There were 51% respondents from the lecturer post scheme. Followed by 34.6% respondents came from the senior lecturer post scheme; 7.2% were the associate professors and 2.6% professors. There was no tutor involved in this study. Meanwhile, there were 1.3% language instructor and 3.3% teaching engineer.  Table 4 shows there were 153 respondents in this study who gave their opinion on e-training and development; motivation and employee performance.  H a1: There are significant relationships between e-training and development; and employee performance among academicians. Table 5 indicated there were significant relationships between e-training and development; and employee performance (r=0.744,p>0.05). It clearly shows that e-training and development does at some level influence the employee performance of UniMAP academicians. H a2 : There are significant relationships between motivation and employee performance among academicians. Table 5 also indicated there were significant relationships between e-training and development; and motivation (r=0.852,p>0.05). It clearly shows that motivation does at some level influence the employee performance of UniMAP academicians. Ha3: There are significant relationships between e-training and development; and motivation among academicians. Table 5 have shown there were significant relationships between e-training and development; and motivation (r=0.765,p>0.05). It clearly shows that e-training and development at some level influence the employee motivation of UniMAP academicians.

Conclusion and recommendation
The findings in this study have shown that e-training and development; and motivation does give significant impact on the job performance of the academicians in Universiti Malaysia Perlis. As quoted by Areros and Pangemanan (2018), employee performance were strongly related with the training and development conducted by the employee's organization. Motivation as consequences of the training and development received has its significance impact in job performance of the employee and thus can increase job quality especially in intellectual capability (Obi-Anike and Ekwe, 2014). Thus, it is recommended for future work to focus more on e-training in application tool and motivation with e-reward system by organizations which can be the window to develop new e-training tech for professional people.