Maximizing Employee Performance with Herzberg's Dual Theory
Unlocking the Secrets of Motivation and Job Satisfaction in the Workplace
If I were to ask you right now if you are happy with your job, how would you respond? You may consider where your job satisfaction falls on the continuum ranging from being completely satisfied at one end to completely dissatisfied at the other.
What if the correct way of thinking is to analyze satisfaction and dissatisfaction independently, on their own continuums, with high and low variations for each, rather than viewing them as opposite ends of a single spectrum?
Frederick Herzberg built a motivation model in the 1950s based on this concept, named Herzberg’s Dual Theory of Motivation. His research suggested that employee motivation is influenced by two types of factors: motivators and hygiene factors.
Motivators drive job satisfaction, while hygiene factors drive job dissatisfaction. Each of them fluctuates from high to low on its spectrum.
When evaluating job satisfaction, it is essential to evaluate the positive and negative factors independently to understand what motivates people.
Traditional View of Job Satisfaction
Hertzberg’s View of Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is optimized when satisfaction factors are high and dissatisfaction factors are low.
Motivators are factors that contribute to an employee's personal growth and sense of accomplishment. These factors are linked to intrinsic motivation and can result in job satisfaction. Herzberg's dual theory identifies six primary motivators, including achievement, recognition, personal growth, responsibility, advancement, and the nature of the work itself.
Hygiene factors are essential to prevent dissatisfaction and maintain a positive job attitude, but they may not necessarily lead to job satisfaction. These factors are typically linked to extrinsic motivation and include elements such as salary, benefits, working conditions, job security, interpersonal relationships, and company policies and administration.
Your level of job satisfaction can be impacted by a range of elements found in your work setting. While you may feel content with aspects such as your job responsibilities, opportunities for growth, or acknowledgment of your efforts. You could also experience discontent with factors such as organizational policies, workplace culture, or interactions with colleagues and managers. This means that you might simultaneously be satisfied and dissatisfied with your job.
One of the characteristics of motivators and hygiene factors is that they are primarily unipolar, meaning they don’t overlap much with each other. Increasing motivators will not alleviate dissatisfaction, and reducing hygiene factors will not increase satisfaction.
Evaluating Priorities: Motivators or Hygiene Factors?
A question that may come up is what factors should you focus on more – motivators or hygiene factors? Personally, I believe increasing motivators will have a bigger effect on your team. Leading with a positive attitude and creating a great working environment has the tendency to diminish dissatisfaction naturally. However, it depends on the context and the specific needs of the company and its employees.
For example, suppose you work for a company that is struggling to retain employees. In that case, you may need to focus more on addressing hygiene factors such as fair compensation, benefits, and safe and comfortable working conditions.
On the other hand, if your company struggles to increase productivity, you may need to focus more on providing opportunities for employees to achieve their goals, be recognized for their work, take on new responsibilities, and grow and advance in their careers.
It's also important to note that each employee has different motivators and hygiene factors. Hence, it's important for you to understand your employees' unique needs and tailor your strategies accordingly.
The Power of Positive Motivators
There is a fundamental difference in how these two factors impact motivations. One is more direct, active, and proactive, wanting to enhance the outcome. The other is passive, deterrent, and reactive, looking to avoid the outcome.
One is about moving toward the positives; the other is about avoiding the negatives. One is encouraging an action; the other is discouraging one. I believe doing good is more powerful than avoiding bad; thus, my opinion is that prioritizing motivators will have a greater impact on motivation.
Balancing Motivation and Hygiene: Strategies for Engaging and Motivating Employees
Combining satisfaction and dissatisfaction in a table, we can classify employees according to their motivation levels into four groups or four quadrants. Each group has its characteristics, and we must identify the specific requirements to engage our teams effectively.
Engaged is the most desirable section to be for employees, managers, and organizations. Ideally, we aspire for everyone to be in this section, as the other categories are less than optimal.
On our job description as managers, there is a bullet right on top, saying we have to keep our team happy, satisfied, and fully engaged – whether this is spelled out exactly like that or not. Indeed, as leaders, we must try our best to have all our team members within this category. And when they are not, we have to make plans to migrate them to this group. We also have to watch closely for potential issues that may emerge and make them move out into a different category.
Frustrated employees are an important group. They are engaged and enjoy their work, but there are certain aspects of their job they are unhappy with. You must uncover the source of this dissatisfaction quickly. Not only do we have to take care of this group, but these issues have a way of spreading like a virus and may negatively affect others.
People leave managers, not companies.
Marcus Buckingham
Disengaged employees are stuck in a situation where they don’t enjoy what they do or see no forward-moving career path. They don’t have significant issues that make them unhappy, but they lack enthusiasm and are likelier to miss work or be absent from the workplace (physically or psychologically). We must consider job expansions for this group (more below) and build a development plan for them.
Unhappy employees will require the most effort to return to the engaged category, as you must work on all motivation factors. You should filter the high-potential personnel and act accordingly.
Factors Affecting Job Attitudes
Let’s look at the 16 most important factors affecting job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Above the dotted line, we have the motivators which primarily influence satisfaction. Similarly, hygiene factors mostly drive dissatisfaction. And as I mentioned above, they don’t overlap much with each other. Each factor primarily affects either satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
One interesting finding is that Herzberg’s theory suggests that salary is not a strong motivator and doesn’t drive job satisfaction significantly. In other words, salary is not a factor that can actually stimulate an individual to perform better. Instead, you must provide a competitive salary to avoid dissatisfaction and maintain a positive job attitude.
This view diverges greatly from the perspective of traditional motivation. Giving people monetary benefits without consideration for other factors, motivators especially, will not increase motivation unconditionally. People will not work harder solely due to a higher salary, but they will be disincentivized with lower than expected earnings.
The winning formula is having self-driven employees and providing them with the work-related tools they need to succeed while protecting them from non-work distractions. You have to watch out for potential troubles and ensure there are no reasons for dissatisfaction.
Job Expansion: A Path to Increase Motivation
One effective way to boost motivation is by enhancing and expanding employees' jobs. This can be achieved through two main approaches: job enrichment, or increasing vertical responsibilities, and job loading, or increasing horizontal responsibilities.
Job Enrichment refers to increasing the scope and complexity of an employee’s job. This includes promotions, assigning new projects, and increasing responsibilities. The focus is on improving the quality of the job, not quantity.
Job enrichment is best used for your top talent. If you have employees in your team who have shown strong potential and you feel confident they can grow in their careers, don't hesitate to give them opportunities to prove their value and grow in their careers.
I often see managers waiting too long to give top-class employees a promotion. They wait until people reach some artificial threshold pre-established in some HR material. The best way to apply this measure is to promote your strong employees before they are ready and let them grow and learn from within their new role.
However, you have to be careful when implementing job enrichment. It can create additional workload and stress for employees if not done thoughtfully. You must ensure they are ready for the challenge and have the necessary skills to handle the added responsibilities.
When appropriately used, job enrichment is a helpful tool to improve and retain your top talent. People who feel they can grow and develop in their job will perform better and stay with the organization longer.
Job Loading refers to adding more tasks or responsibilities to a job without necessarily increasing the level of challenge, autonomy, or variety. This approach focuses on increasing the quantity of the job rather than the quality. People will do more of the same.
In reality, opportunities for quick and significant growth, such as promotions or increased responsibilities, are limited. Often to enrich certain jobs, a horizontal expansion may take place. These can be job rotations or adding new but similarly difficult responsibilities.
Many organizations I worked for encouraged job rotations as a tool to increase the breadth of experiences. Employees can move between different roles or departments within an organization. The goal is to provide a broader range of skills and experiences.
Let’s say you just graduated from college and got a new job as a social media coordinator in the marketing department. It is beneficial for you to have opportunities to work in other teams within marketing, such as brand, email, and analytics. And maybe you want to try other departments that you may feel attracted to.
Job expansion through job enrichment and job loading can be an effective way to increase motivation and retain top talent. It is important to approach job expansion thoughtfully, ensuring that employees have the necessary skills and support to handle the added responsibilities.
In conclusion, Herzberg’s dual spectrum of satisfaction and dissatisfaction is a valuable framework for understanding the main factors affecting an individual’s motivation.
By recognizing the differences between motivators and hygiene factors and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each, managers can create a work environment that promotes high levels of motivation and performance.