The Research On The Optimization Problem Of Grass-roots Civil Servants’ Incentive Mechanism

Our country is a big country with a population of 1.3 billion, civil servants at the grass-roots level play an important role in the effective implementation of government policy. However, compared with senior civil servants, civil servants at the grass-roots level obtained relatively low level of salary, few promotion opportunities, and facing more pressure. With the development of economy, the existing system of civil servants began to appear a lot of disadvantages, as the absence of incentive mechanism, civil servants have a strong incentive to seek their own utilities. In view of the defects of existing civil service system, our country is trying to reform the civil service system. Civil servants’ incentive mechanism is one of the most important parts of civil service system reform, however, the existing incentive mechanism theory and empirical studies generally concentrated in the private enterprises while few on public institutions, especially on the grass-roots civil servants group in public institutions. For this reason, our study focused on the optimizing of the incentive mechanism of civil servants at the grass-roots level under the background of the national civil service system reform.The research is divided into six chapters, the first chapter is the introduction, including the research background, research significance, research status in China and abroad, research contents and framework. The second chapter is some related concepts and theoretical basis, including the concepts of motivation and incentive mechanism, the concepts of civil servants and civil servants at the grass-roots level, and three mainstream of incentive theory. The third chapter is about the current situations of incentive mechanism on civil servants at the grass-roots level in our country. We investigated the salary-incentive mechanism, promotion-incentive mechanism and mental-incentive mechanism through in-depth interviews and questionnaire survey. The fourth chapter is about the problems and causes of incentive mechanism on civil servants at the grass-roots level. The fifth chapter is about the policy recommendations. The sixth chapter is the conclusion part in which the main conclusions of this study are summarized.The following main conclusions have reached: firstly, the level of grass-roots civil servants’ compensation is generally low while the compensation determination and issuing system tends to be excessively centralized. Moreover, their confidence of career development is generally low. Besides they rarely works over time but often feel a lot of occupational stress and burnout. Overall their job satisfaction is generally low. Secondly, the grass-roots civil servants’ pay levels and their confidence of career development is significantly positive related to job satisfaction. That is we can improve their job satisfaction trough improving their pay levels or their confidence of career development. Meanwhile we find that working hours per week have no significant relationship to job satisfaction. Thirdly, the main problem of salary-incentive mechanism is that the grass-roots civil servants salary level is too low to catch you up the pace of economic development. At the same time their compensation can’t always timely and sufficient funding. Fourthly, the main problem of promotion- incentive mechanism is that the criterion is not objective while the space is not enough. Furthermore, it needs a long time to get promoted. Lastly, the main problem of mental-incentive mechanism is the neglect of harmonious and fair climate in public institutions and positive psychological contract between government and civil servants at the grass-roots level.According to the above problems, the study puts forward the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions. First of all, at the conceptual level, the incentive idea of grass-roots civil servants should be reshaped, including the values of grass-roots civil servants and the "people-oriented" management idea of government agencies. Secondly, at the institutional level, the incentive system of grass-roots civil servant should be optimized, including optimize laws and regulations, establish a formal salary survey and salary growth mechanism, set up a transparent pay mechanism and strict compensation regulation mechanism, set up a performance evaluation mechanism, establish a mechanism for career development plans, establish a formal psychological evaluation and management mechanism. At the operational level, the incentive methods should be innovated, including innovation of performance evaluation system, motivation types and motivation techniques.