July at Mill Lane: By four in the morning the Mill Lane bakehouse is at 38°C. The extractor fan has broken twice this month, and the ovens have been on since two.
The night shift: Tom and Ade both call in sick on the same night. The others grumble through the shift and load the vans at five, late.
Priti's answer: Lena asks Priti, the head baker, what would make the bakers happier. Priti's answer surprises her: "Fix the fan and they will stop complaining. That is not the same as making them want to do more."
Priti is saying what the American psychologist Frederick Herzberg found in 1959. He asked about 200 engineers and accountants to describe a time they felt very good about their work, and a time they felt very bad.
The good times were almost always about the work itself: finishing something hard, being thanked, being trusted. The bad times were almost always about the surroundings: the pay, the boss, the rules, the office. They were two different lists, not the two ends of one list. His idea is called the motivation-hygiene theory (or the two-factor theory).
Hygiene factors: the job's surroundings
- Pay. The bakers' wage, and any bonus.
- Working conditions. The heat, the broken fan, the 2 a.m. start.
- Company policy and rules. How rotas and holidays are decided.
- Supervision. How Priti manages the shift.
- Relationships at work. Getting on with Priti and the other bakers.
- Job security and status. A safe job and a proper job title.
Motivators: the job itself
- Achievement. A batch of sourdough that comes out perfect.
- Recognition. Being told that the High Street customers asked for it by name.
- The work itself. Work that is interesting and worth doing.
- Responsibility. Being trusted to run a bread without being checked.
- Advancement. A chance of promotion.
- Personal growth. Learning a new skill, such as laminated pastry.
Hygiene factors remove dissatisfaction; motivators create effort.
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A quick test: Ask: is this about what surrounds the job, or about the job itself?
The fan, the wage and the rota surround the job, so they are hygiene factors. Owning the sourdough, being thanked for it and learning a new bread are the job itself, so they are motivators.
Why 'hygiene'? Herzberg borrowed the word from medicine. Clean water does not make you healthy, but dirty water makes you ill. Good hygiene factors do not make people motivated, but poor ones make them unhappy.
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Lena does the obvious thing. In August she repairs the fan properly, adds a second one, and gives every baker a 5% pay rise.
Straight away
- The complaints stop.
- Nobody calls in sick.
- The vans leave on time.
By October
- Nothing else has changed.
- The bread is the same, and the pace is the same.
- Nobody has suggested a single new idea.
- When Lena asks Maya how things are, she shrugs: "It's fine. It's a job."
Two scales, not one: Herzberg's central point: the opposite of dissatisfied is not motivated. It is simply not dissatisfied.
Fixing a hygiene factor moves people from unhappy to neutral. Only a motivator moves them from neutral to wanting to do more. Lena has done the first half and not the second.
| Motivators missing | Motivators present | |
|---|---|---|
| Hygiene factors poor | Unhappy and not trying: July at Mill Lane, with sick days and late vans | Keen but complaining: they like the work, and may still leave over the heat or the pay |
| Hygiene factors good enough | No complaints, no extra effort: October at Mill Lane, "It's a job" | Motivated: no complaints, and a reason to try harder |
Pay is a hygiene factor: It is tempting to say the pay rise should have motivated the bakers. Herzberg says no. A low or unfair wage causes complaints, and a rise stops them, but within a month the new wage is simply the normal wage. The same goes for a bonus.
Herzberg against Taylor: This is where Herzberg breaks with Taylor (2.4.1), who saw money as the reason people work hard. For Herzberg, money only takes away a reason to be unhappy.
None of this makes hygiene factors unimportant. Take one away, cut the pay or let the fan break again, and dissatisfaction comes straight back: sick days, late vans, people leaving. Hygiene factors have to be good enough before anything else can work. They just cannot do the motivating on their own.
The theory in two lines: Hygiene factors: poor ones cause dissatisfaction; good ones remove it, and that is all.
Motivators: they create satisfaction and effort, and they come from the job itself.
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Priti's plan for the winter: With the fan fixed and the pay fair, Priti turns to the other list. Her question is not "what else can we give the bakers?" but "what is missing from the job itself?"
The job as it is: Every night, each baker does whatever part of whatever bread is next. Nobody finishes anything, and nobody knows whether the shops liked it.
Applying Herzberg is a two-step job. First, get the hygiene factors good enough, so there is nothing to complain about. Second, build motivators into the work itself. Herzberg called that second step job enrichment: redesigning a job so that it gives the person more responsibility, a whole piece of work to finish, and a chance to achieve and be recognised.
What Priti changes, motivator by motivator
Responsibility
Each baker now owns one bread from dough to van. Rosa, who has baked for eleven years, takes charge of the sourdough recipe. Each baker checks their own batch before the vans leave at five.
Achievement and the work itself
A baker who owns the rye sees it through from mixing to the last loaf on the tray. A finished batch is theirs, good or bad, which makes it worth getting right.
Recognition
At the Friday break Priti reads out what Aisha, Kofi and Jonas hear from customers in the shops. When High Street sells out of Rosa's sourdough by ten, Rosa hears about it.
Advancement
Lena creates an assistant head baker post, open to any of the six. For the first time there is somewhere to go at Mill Lane without leaving.
Personal growth
Maya asks to learn laminated pastry for croissants, and spends two nights a month training with Priti. She is learning a skill, not only repeating one.
February: Ade suggests a seeded rye for the Park Road shop, and it sells. Rosa's sourdough has a waiting list at High Street. Maya's first croissants go out in March.
Nothing here cost much. The fan and the pay rise cost Lena money; the second step cost Priti time and trust.
Notice the order. If Priti had tried this in July, with the bakehouse at 38°C, it would have failed: nobody wants to own the sourdough in a room they cannot breathe in. Hygiene first, motivators second.
Herzberg's theory is useful because it tells a manager where to look. It warns against spending on pay and perks and expecting effort in return, and it points at the design of the job.
But it has limits, and a good answer weighs them.
Who he asked
- About 200 engineers and accountants in 1950s America
- Professionals with interesting work, not night-shift bakers or counter staff
- People in routine jobs may care more about pay and security
How he asked
- People were asked to recall their best and worst moments at work
- People tend to credit themselves for good times and blame their surroundings for bad ones
- So the two lists may partly reflect how people tell stories
What it leaves out
- Pay can motivate some people, for example those on low wages or saving for something
- Some jobs are hard to enrich: Goldcrust's counter staff follow a script set by head office
- A satisfied worker is not always a more productive one
Enrichment is not free: Giving Rosa charge of the sourdough takes Priti's time to train and trust her, and a baker who checks her own batch can get it wrong. Not every employee wants more responsibility, either.
For Lena's six bakers this is manageable. For Goldcrust's 400 bakeries, run from head office through many levels, redesigning every job is a much bigger task.
| Taylor (2.4.1) | Maslow (2.4.1) | Herzberg | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What motivates people | Money | Meeting the next unmet need, from food and safety up to growth | Motivators in the job itself: achievement, recognition, responsibility |
| What pay does | Drives effort, so pay by output | Meets the lower needs | Removes dissatisfaction only; it is a hygiene factor |
| What a manager should do | Set the fastest method and pay piece rates | Find which level each person has reached and meet the next | Make the surroundings good enough, then enrich the job |
Herzberg and Maslow side by side: Hygiene factors look like Maslow's lower and middle levels: pay, safety, security, getting on with people. Motivators look like his upper levels: esteem and self-actualization.
But when a question names Herzberg, answer with Herzberg alone. A paragraph on Maslow or Taylor is a paragraph that is not about the theory you were asked to use.
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How this comes up: The big one is ten marks: with reference to the case and Herzberg's theory, discuss whether the business should choose Option 1 or Option 2.
What each question asks
- Ten marks. Each option is a list of changes. Your job is to sort them into hygiene factors and motivators, and then decide.
- Two marks. Describe one need that a business meets for its employees, using a theory other than Maslow's.
- Short recall. Define hygiene factors, or state two motivators.
The ten-mark pattern
- Sort every item. Label each change in each option as a hygiene factor or a motivator, and say why.
- Option 1 in the case. What it fixes, using the case's facts, and why fixing it will not by itself motivate.
- Option 2 in the case. Which motivators it adds, and what could stop them working here.
- Weigh them. A hygiene problem left unfixed can sink the motivators; motivators with nothing to complain about raise effort.
- Decide. Choose one, or the best parts of both, and say what information in the case is missing.
Three traps: Calling pay a motivator. A pay rise or a bonus is a hygiene factor. So is a better canteen, and so is a friendly team.
Using one list only. An answer that explains only the hygiene factors, or only the motivators, has used half the theory.
Bringing in Maslow. The question names Herzberg. Use his two lists and nothing else.
With reference to Lena's Bakery and Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory, discuss whether Lena should implement Plan A or Plan B for the counter staff.
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