Factors Affecting Employee Work Motivation in Road Transport Service Enterprises in Hanoi, Vietnam: An Analysis of the Current Situation

Road transport service enterprises in Hanoi depend on a frontline workforce of drivers, conductors, dispatchers and maintenance staff whose effort directly shapes service quality and road safety. Yet the sector is reporting driver shortages, high turnover and recurring disputes over pay. This paper analyses and assesses the current state of the factors that shape employee work motivation in these enterprises. It does not estimate a causal model. Instead, it builds an analytical framework from Herzberg’s two-factor theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Vroom’s expectancy theory and prior Vietnamese studies of transport firms, and then reads secondary evidence for the period 2021 to 2026 against that framework. The evidence comes from national labour force surveys, Hanoi government plans, transport law, operator reports and published empirical studies.

The assessment points to an imbalance. Hygiene factors are under pressure: earnings depend heavily on output, working time is long and tightly regulated, the risk of road accidents is constant, and a large share of platform drivers work outside formal employment. Some organisational factors are improving, particularly in large operators such as Hanoi Transport Corporation (Transerco), which raised frontline pay from July 2026, adopted KPI-based quality control and launched structured recruitment and training. Recognition, career paths and two-way communication with managers remain weak across most smaller firms. The paper proposes measures on pay design, working time, safety, career ladders and management practice, and outlines a survey design for future testing.