Some people say they have no enthusiasm for work even though their pay went up, their office became more comfortable, and the company rules were made more reasonable. Others, with the same pay as before, lose track of time because the work itself is interesting. If the opposite of satisfaction were dissatisfaction, removing dissatisfaction alone should create motivation, yet in reality things often do not work that way.
The person who explained this mismatch with a single theory was the American psychologist Frederick Herzberg, and his theory is Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory. Its core is the view that the factors that create satisfaction with a job and the factors that create dissatisfaction are separate sets, and it is widely known by two names: motivators and hygiene factors.
In this article, we will look in turn at how Herzberg arrived at this theory, what hygiene factors and motivators each are, and what to be careful about when using the theory at work.
Looking at Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction Separately
A Theory That Began with Interviews
Herzberg did his research by asking people directly when they had felt extremely satisfied at work and when they had felt extremely dissatisfied. The subjects were 203 engineers and accountants in the Pittsburgh area of the United States, said to have been chosen because these occupations were growing in importance in the business world at the time. Respondents told of events that clearly changed their mood, each as a story with a beginning and an end, and the researchers grouped these stories to analyze which factors kept coming up.
The results were set out in the 1959 book The Motivation to Work, and the theory spread widely in 1968 through an article in the Harvard Business Review. This method of having people recall events one by one and then analyzing them is called the Critical Incident Technique. The fact that the satisfying stories often involved achievement and recognition, while the dissatisfying ones often involved things like company policy and supervision, became the backbone of the later theory.
Hygiene Factors: Without Them, Dissatisfaction; With Them, Still Not Satisfaction
Herzberg called the factors that create dissatisfaction Hygiene Factors. The idea is that hygiene prevents illness but does not make a person any healthier. They mostly lie outside the work itself, in the environment surrounding the work.
- Company policy and administration (Company Policy): Dissatisfaction builds up when rules are unreasonable or procedures are cumbersome.
- Supervision: How a boss gives instructions and manages people belongs here.
- Salary: Too little becomes a source of dissatisfaction, but a small raise is seen as not keeping people satisfied for long.
- Working Conditions and Relationships: A safe, pleasant workplace and relationships with colleagues fall under this.
When these factors are well in place, dissatisfaction merely decreases, which means a state of no dissatisfaction. Having no dissatisfaction is not the same as being satisfied. That is why Herzberg held that no matter how much you improve hygiene factors, people do not become more engrossed in their work.
Motivators: Satisfaction That Comes from the Work Itself
The factors that create satisfaction are called Motivators. They come from the work itself and the experience of accomplishing it, and they arise when a person feels meaning in the work and feels they are growing.
(1) Achievement
The experience of finishing a task given to you or solving a difficult problem.
(2) Recognition
The experience of having what you did made known to others and valued.
(3) The work itself and responsibility
A sense that the work is interesting and challenging and that you have room to decide for yourself.
(4) Advancement and growth
A sense that there is a chance to take on bigger work or build new abilities.
Herzberg explained that satisfaction and motivation arise when these factors are present, and that their absence does not by itself turn into dissatisfaction. For this reason, the combination of the two kinds of factors gives four different pictures of a workplace. When both hygiene and motivation are high, it is the ideal state, and when only hygiene is high, there is no dissatisfaction but people work only for the paycheck. When only motivation is high, the work is exciting but there are many complaints, and when both are low, it is the worst state. Knowing this difference lets a manager decide what to fix first.
What to Know When Using It at Work
As a way to increase motivators, Herzberg proposed Job Enrichment. It does not mean splitting work into smaller pieces or making it simpler; it means having the person in charge take more part in planning, carrying out, and evaluating the work. You can hand over work as a complete unit, let people hear the results of their own work directly, and give them new and difficult tasks.
That said, the theory still draws criticism today, and it is worth knowing what to be careful about when reading it.
(1) Limits of the research method
It has been pointed out that the result that satisfaction and dissatisfaction move separately may have come from the interview method of having people recall events. This is because a tendency to credit oneself for good events and blame outside causes for bad ones may have been mixed in. Today, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are often not treated as entirely separate scales.
(2) It differs from person to person
The theory assumes an average worker, so it does not handle individual differences well. The same pay can be a sign of recognition for one person and so act as a motivator. Some later studies also found results linking the relationship with a supervisor to high satisfaction.
(3) Satisfaction is not the same as performance
The assumption that satisfied employees produce more is not always true. A satisfied person does not necessarily achieve more at work.
Even so, the reason this theory has lasted so long is that it shows clearly that looking after pay and benefits is not the end of the matter. Removing the causes of dissatisfaction and growing the causes of motivation are different tasks, and a workplace improves only when both are done. An eye that does not stop at reducing dissatisfaction but also reconsiders the meaning of the work itself is the first step of the two-factor theory.
