What do people want from their work? Do they want a higher salary? Or do they value good relationships with colleagues, opportunities for growth and advancement, or something else?
This is an important question because it lies at the heart of motivation—the art of communicating with your team members so that they perform at superior levels.
One of the most popular theories of motivation was developed by Frederick Herzberg (1959). It is based on an analysis of interviews conducted by the researcher among 200 engineers and accountants working in firms in and around Pittsburgh. To create the theory, Herzberg used the critical incident method. During the interview, he asked people two questions:
- When did you feel most satisfied with your work, and what gave you that satisfaction?
- When did you feel the worst about your work, and what gave rise to this attitude?
The results of this study showed that one set of factors tends to cause job satisfaction, while another set of factors tends to cause job dissatisfaction. He grouped these factors into two clusters.
- Hygiene factors are external in nature.
- Motivational factors are internal in nature.
Hygiene factors in Herzberg's theory of motivation
Hygiene factors do not motivate people, they simply prevent dissatisfaction and maintain the status quo. Such factors do not produce positive results, but they prevent negative results. The absence of these factors leads to job dissatisfaction. According to Herzberg, “hygienic factors” include:
- Salary
- Workplace safety
- Working conditions
- Company management policy
- Level of control over work
- Interpersonal relationships with colleagues
- Interpersonal relationships with the manager
- Interpersonal relationships with subordinates
Important
- Hygiene factors are external in nature and relate to the context of the work rather than its content.
- The manager's first task is to prevent employee dissatisfaction by addressing hygiene issues within reasonable limits.
Motivational factors in Herzberg's theory of motivation
As mentioned above, these factors are internal and directly related to work. Motivational factors have a positive impact on job satisfaction and often lead to increased job performance. Herzberg concluded that there are the following factors that motivate employees:
- Achievement - ambitious goals.
- Recognition - from management and colleagues
- The work itself is important and interesting
- Responsibility - participate in decision making
- Promotion - career growth
- Professional growth - new knowledge, skills
Important
Any improvement in these factors will improve the satisfaction level of employees, thus these factors can be used to motivate them.
Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation in practice
To put this theory into practice, you must take two steps. First, you need to eliminate the dissatisfaction your people face, and second, you need to help them find job satisfaction.
Step One: Eliminate Job Dissatisfaction
Let me remind you that Herzberg called the reasons for dissatisfaction “hygiene factors.” To get rid of them, you need:
- Correct bad and disruptive company policies.
- Provide effective, supportive and unobtrusive supervision.
- Create and maintain a culture of respect and dignity for all team members.
- Ensure wages are competitive. It is enough to make it slightly above the average percentile for the market. Salary matters when choosing a job. In the future, it ceases to play an important role. Only if its level does not drop significantly relative to the market.
- Ensure work safety.
All these actions will help you eliminate job dissatisfaction in your organization. And there is no point in trying to motivate people until these problems are solved!
However, you cannot stop at addressing hygiene factors alone. Remember, if an employee does not have negative feelings towards his job, this does not mean he is satisfied with it and is ready to work with full dedication.
Step Two: Create Conditions for Job Satisfaction
People should like their work. To achieve this, Herzberg advises finding and using individual motivating factors for each of your employees. You should do the following:
- Empower employees to achieve ambitious goals. In this case, the goals should be what is called stretching, not tearing. An impossible goal will become a demotivator for the employee.
- Recognize people's contributions and achievements. There is a saying that is worth adopting: praise in front of everyone, scold in private.
- Give people interesting, new tasks.
- Give more responsibility to each team member.
- Provide opportunities for advancement within the company. Let the promotion criteria be clear and understandable.
- Provide opportunities for learning and development.
Tip 1:
You will need to find different approaches for different people, in other words, if something motivates one employee, it is not a fact that it will also motivate another. Talk to your people regularly to find out what is important to them.
Tip 2:
This theory is largely responsible for the practice of giving people more responsibility for planning and controlling their work, which works great for increasing motivation and job satisfaction.
conclusions
The relationship between motivation and job satisfaction is not overly complex. The problem is that many employers view hygiene factors as motivating factors when, in fact, they provide very little motivation. It's a shame that some managers like to use this approach because they believe that people are primarily motivated by the financial aspect.
Your task is to be good leaders. So take a look around, talk to your people and start getting rid of the things that irritate them in the company and in the workplace. Make sure they are treated fairly and with respect.
Once you've done that, look for ways you can help people grow in their jobs. Give them opportunities to succeed and praise them for those achievements.
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Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation
Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation was developed in 1959 by Frederick Herzberg and his colleagues - their goal was to find out the reasons for a person's satisfaction and dissatisfaction with activities, as well as to identify the reasons for the increase and decrease in labor productivity.
To do this, scientists conducted a survey of two hundred engineers and employees of one large organization working in the field of paint and varnish coatings. Participants had to describe those situations when their attitude towards work was positive and they had a desire to work, and situations when their attitude towards work, on the contrary, was negative, and they felt dissatisfaction, but there was no desire to work at all.
The results of this study allowed Herzberg to conclude that job satisfaction depends on its internal and content characteristics, and dissatisfaction depends on the external characteristics of the job and its context. The result was that all factors that influence human activity in production situations were divided into hygienic and motivating.
References
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Herzberg, Frederick;
Mausner, Bernard; Snyderman, Barbara B. (1959). Motivation to work
(2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley. ISBN 0471373893. - Herzberg, Frederick (1966). Work and Human Nature
. Cleveland: World Publishing. OCLC 243610. - Herzberg, Frederick (January–February 1964). "Motivational-hygienic concept and labor force problems." Human Resource Management
(27): 3–7. - ^ a b c d
Hackman, J. Richard;
Oldham, Greg R. (August 1976). "Motivation through Job Design: Testing a Theory." Organizational Behavior and Human Performance
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(2): 250–279. Doi:10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7. OCLC 4925746330. - ^ a b
Herzberg, Frederick (January–February 1968).
“Once again: how to motivate employees?” Harvard Business Review
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(1):53–62. OCLC 219963337. - "Herzberg's Theory of Motivation and Hygiene (Two-Factor Theory)." NetMBA.com
. Retrieved December 9, 2014. - ^ a b
"Herzberg's motivators and hygiene factors."
Mindtools.com
. Retrieved December 2, 2014. - Shujahat, Muhammad; Ali, Bakhtiyar; Nawaz, Faisal; Durst, Suzanne; Kianto, Aino (2018). “Transforming the Impact of Knowledge Management into Knowledge-Based Innovation: The Neglected and Mediating Role of Skilled Worker Satisfaction.” Human factors and ergonomics in production
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- Schultz, Duane P.; Schultz, Sydney Ellen (2010). Psychology and work today: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology
(10th ed.). New York: Prentice-Hall. pp. 38–39. ISBN 0-205-68358-4. - Hines, George H. (December 1973). "Cross-cultural differences in the two-factor theory of motivation." Journal of Applied Psychology
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Hygiene factors
Hygiene factors, also called health factors, are factors that are related to the environment in which the work itself takes place. The term "hygienic" was borrowed by Herzberg from medical terminology, in which it refers to factors that help maintain health, but do not necessarily improve it.
Among the most important hygiene factors are the following:
- Company and administration policy
- Safety
- Comfortable working conditions
- Acceptable lighting, good heating, etc.
- Schedule
- Salary
- Availability of paid holidays
- Availability of sick leave
- Carrying out activities in the field of social security, healthcare and other social programs
- Relationships with colleagues and management
- Level of direct control of work
Hygiene factors almost never cause a complete feeling of satisfaction and do not have an activating effect on human activity. However, thanks to their presence, the feeling of dissatisfaction can be prevented; if they are absent, this may cause a feeling of dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction and irritation among employees of the organization.
The presence of this group of factors leads to the emergence of a state where there is no job dissatisfaction as such, but there is no job satisfaction either, because Positive hygiene factors are a given. Negatively characterized hygiene factors, in turn, can lead to complete dissatisfaction with work.
It follows from this that the conditions in which work takes place cannot be considered as motivating factors. Most people would probably be happy to work in a pleasant environment, but based on this theory itself, a clean shop or machine is unlikely to be a substitute for the work itself, from which a person can receive pleasure or public recognition of his merits and achievements.
According to Herzberg, those employers who seek to increase the motivation of their employees by increasing wages will ultimately be disappointed, because Once employees have become accustomed to the new salary level, they are likely to view it as a hygiene factor. And from the moment increased payments become a regular component of the salary, they will immediately cease to motivate people. Human psychology is such that he is motivated more by the desire to have something than by the fact that he already has something.
Despite the fact that a fairly large number of managers are of the opinion that a well-thought-out system of rewarding employees is a motivation enhancer, in fact it turns out that any such system will be taken for granted: it, of course, will maintain a feeling of satisfaction, but will not create it at all .
Motivating factors
Motivating factors, also called motivators, are directly related to the essence of the activity itself and its nature. They help to increase the level of job satisfaction and are considered as an independent group of needs, which, summarized, can be called growth needs.
The main motivators include the following:
- Success
- Public acceptance
- Interesting activity content
- Opportunity to grow professionally
- Degree of responsibility
- Official position
Social recognition gives a person a sense of self-respect and self-worth, which should tell the manager to provide feedback to the employee about a job well done. Another significant factor is the employee’s activity itself. It must be borne in mind that monotonous work does not bring satisfaction, but creative and varied activities, on the contrary, stimulate growth, prevent tardiness, absenteeism, etc. In addition, for many people, career growth and additional responsibility serve as an excellent motivator.
Interpretation of scales
The results obtained are displayed in the form of points, the assessment of which will allow you to determine several facts:
The most important criteria for an employee; The most insignificant criteria for him; The ratio of the importance of hygiene criteria to motivational ones (which of them is more important for the employee).
After the worker’s results have been deciphered, he can find out how well his current place of work meets his requirements. The following scheme is used for this:
Herzberg's conclusions
In the process of his research, Herzberg came to the following conclusions:
- Satisfaction and dissatisfaction with activities are two independent dimensions that can be visually displayed on two different graphs;
- There is a whole group of factors influencing the first graph “satisfaction with activity - no satisfaction with activity” (motivating factors), as well as a group of other factors influencing the second graph “dissatisfaction with activity – no dissatisfaction with activity” (hygiene factors).
The formula derived by Herzberg is as follows:
- Work environment and working conditions + motivating factors = state of satisfaction
- Work environment and working conditions - motivating factors = zero effect
Summary
Between Frederick Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation, certain parallels can be drawn with Abraham Maslow's pyramid of needs: the hygiene needs of Herzberg's theory correspond to the lowest level of needs of Maslow's pyramid, and motivating factors correspond to the highest level of needs, respectively.
Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation was a new explanation of the mechanism of people's motivation in the process of work. Previously, to increase staff motivation, attempts were made to improve working conditions, increase wages, provide special benefits, in other words, attention was paid to hygiene factors. But these attempts and solutions did not give the necessary results, because... They had no effect on employee motivation. Subsequently, many organizations attempted to implement the basic provisions of Herzberg's theory, and in fact they showed their effectiveness.
However, despite the effective application of Herzberg's theory in practice by many organizations, several criticisms have been leveled at the theory:
- The source of motivation can be both motivating and hygiene factors, which depends on the needs of each individual person;
- A lack of motivators can lead to a state of dissatisfaction with the activity, and successfully formed hygiene factors can lead to a state of satisfaction, which depends on each specific situation;
- Not in all cases, a state of satisfaction with activities leads to an increase in labor productivity, which significantly diverges from Herzberg’s assumptions;
- A system for increasing motivation should be created taking into account all possible behavioral characteristics of people and characteristics of the environment.
All these remarks are evidence that motivation should be considered as a plausible process. What will motivate one person in a certain situation may not have any effect on him in another situation or on another person in a similar situation.
Thus, we can summarize: Frederick Herzberg, of course, made significant contributions to the understanding of human motivation, but in his theory he did not take into account many variables that determine situations related to motivation. Further research by scientists led to the creation of procedural theories of motivation.
We also recommend reading:
- Storytelling
- 10 factors of professional burnout
- Causes of aggression
- Cattell's personality model
- The Hawthorne effect: what does labor productivity actually depend on?
- Adams' Theory of Fairness to Employees
- Professional burnout: what is it and how to prevent it?
- Social technologies
- Internal and external motivation: which is more effective?
- Business motivation model
- How to enjoy work
Key words:1Psychoregulation
Workarounds
Herzberg's theory focuses on the importance of internal job factors as driving forces for employees. He designed it to improve the quality of work for employees. Herzberg wanted to give employees the opportunity to participate in the planning, execution and evaluation of their work. He suggested doing this:[4][5][10]
- Removing some of management's control over employees and increasing ownership and ownership of their work, which in turn will increase employee autonomy.
- Creating complete and natural work units where possible. An example would be allowing employees to create an entire division or section rather than allowing them to create only part of it.
- Providing regular and ongoing performance and performance feedback directly to employees rather than through managers.
- Encourage employees to take on new and challenging tasks and become experts at solving them.
