One More Time:How Do You Motivate Employees? · One More Time:How Do You Motivate Employees? by Frederick Herzberg Reprint r0301f

One More Time: How Do YouMotivate Employees?

by Frederick Herzberg

Reprint r0301f

HBR Case Study ro3o1aThe Best-Laid Incentive PlansSteve Kerr

Voices ro3o1bMoving Mountains

Beyond Empowerment: Building ro3o1ca Company of CitizensBrook Manville and Josiah Ober

How to Motivate Your Problem People ro3o1dNigel Nicholson

What’s Wrong with Executive ro3o1eCompensation?A roundtable moderated by Charles Elson

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One More Time: How Do You ro3o1fMotivate Employees?Frederick Herzberg

Pygmalion in Management ro3o1gJ. Sterling Livingston

Management by Whose Objectives? ro3o1hHarry Levinson

Power Is the Great Motivator ro3o1jDavid C. McClelland and David H. Burnham

Fair Process: Managing in the ro3o1kKnowledge EconomyW. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

January 2003

Copyright © 2002 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. 3

When Frederick Herzberg researched the sources of employee motivation during

the 1950s and 1960s, he discovered a dichotomy that stills intrigues (and baffles)

managers: The things that make people satisfied and motivated on the job are dif-

ferent in kind from the things that make them dissatisfied.

Ask workers what makes them unhappy at work, and you’ll hear about an annoy-

ing boss, a low salary, an uncomfortable work space, or stupid rules. Managed

badly, environmental factors make people miserable, and they can certainly be de-

motivating. But even if managed brilliantly, they don’t motivate anybody to work

much harder or smarter. People are motivated, instead, by interesting work, chal-

lenge, and increasing responsibility. These intrinsic factors answer people’s deep-

seated need for growth and achievement.

Herzberg’s work influenced a generation of scholars and managers – but his

conclusions don’t seem to have fully penetrated the American workplace, if the

extraordinary attention still paid to compensation and incentive packages is

any indication.

How many articles, books, speeches,and workshops have pleaded plain-tively, “How do I get an employee to do what I want?”

The psychology of motivation is tre-mendously complex, and what has beenunraveled with any degree of assuranceis small indeed. But the dismal ratio of knowledge to speculation has notdampened the enthusiasm for newforms of snake oil that are constantlycoming on the market, many of themwith academic testimonials. Doubtlessthis article will have no depressing im-

pact on the market for snake oil, butsince the ideas expressed in it have beentested in many corporations and otherorganizations, it will help – I hope – toredress the imbalance in the afore-mentioned ratio.

“Motivating” with KITAIn lectures to industry on the problem,I have found that the audiences areusually anxious for quick and practicalanswers, so I will begin with a straight-forward, practical formula for movingpeople.

Forget praise.

Forget punishment.

Forget cash.

You need to make

their jobs more

interesting.

One More Time: How Do YouMotivate Employees?by Frederick Herzberg

1968

B E ST O F H B R

What is the simplest, surest, and mostdirect way of getting someone to dosomething? Ask? But if the person re-sponds that he or she does not want to do it, then that calls for psychologi-cal consultation to determine the rea-son for such obstinacy. Tell the person?The response shows that he or she doesnot understand you, and now an expertin communication methods has to bebrought in to show you how to getthrough. Give the person a monetaryincentive? I do not need to remind thereader of the complexity and difficultyinvolved in setting up and adminis-tering an incentive system. Show the person? This means a costly trainingprogram. We need a simple way.

Every audience contains the “directaction” manager who shouts, “Kick theperson!” And this type of manager isright. The surest and least circumlo-cuted way of getting someone to dosomething is to administer a kick in thepants – to give what might be calledthe KITA.

There are various forms of KITA, andhere are some of them:

Negative Physical KITA. This is a lit-eral application of the term and wasfrequently used in the past. It has, how-ever, three major drawbacks: 1) It is in-elegant; 2) it contradicts the preciousimage of benevolence that most orga-nizations cherish; and 3) since it is aphysical attack, it directly stimulates theautonomic nervous system, and thisoften results in negative feedback – theemployee may just kick you in return.These factors give rise to certain taboosagainst negative physical KITA.

In uncovering infinite sources of psy-chological vulnerabilities and the appro-priate methods to play tunes on them,

psychologists have come to the rescue ofthose who are no longer permitted touse negative physical KITA.“He took myrug away”; “I wonder what she meant bythat”; “The boss is always going aroundme”– these symptomatic expressions ofego sores that have been rubbed raw arethe result of application of:

Negative Psychological KITA. Thishas several advantages over negativephysical KITA. First, the cruelty is notvisible; the bleeding is internal andcomes much later. Second, since it af-fects the higher cortical centers of the

brain with its inhibitory powers, it re-duces the possibility of physical back-lash. Third, since the number of psy-chological pains that a person can feelis almost infinite, the direction and sitepossibilities of the KITA are increasedmany times. Fourth, the person admin-istering the kick can manage to beabove it all and let the system accom-plish the dirty work. Fifth, those whopractice it receive some ego satisfaction(one-upmanship), whereas they wouldfind drawing blood abhorrent. Finally,if the employee does complain, he orshe can always be accused of being para-noid; there is no tangible evidence of anactual attack.

Now, what does negative KITA ac-complish? If I kick you in the rear (phys-ically or psychologically), who is mo-tivated? I am motivated; you move!Negative KITA does not lead to moti-vation, but to movement. So:

Positive KITA. Let us consider moti-vation. If I say to you,“Do this for me orthe company, and in return I will giveyou a reward, an incentive, more status,a promotion, all the quid pro quos thatexist in the industrial organization,” amI motivating you? The overwhelmingopinion I receive from managementpeople is,“Yes, this is motivation.”

I have a year-old schnauzer. When itwas a small puppy and I wanted it tomove, I kicked it in the rear and itmoved. Now that I have finished its obe-dience training, I hold up a dog biscuitwhen I want the schnauzer to move. Inthis instance, who is motivated–I or thedog? The dog wants the biscuit, but it isI who want it to move. Again, I am theone who is motivated, and the dog isthe one who moves. In this instance allI did was apply KITA frontally; I exerteda pull instead of a push. When industrywishes to use such positive KITAs, it has

available an incredible number and va-riety of dog biscuits (jelly beans for hu-mans) to wave in front of employees toget them to jump.

Myths About MotivationWhy is KITA not motivation? If I kickmy dog (from the front or the back), hewill move. And when I want him tomove again, what must I do? I must kickhim again. Similarly, I can charge a per-son’s battery, and then recharge it, andrecharge it again. But it is only whenone has a generator of one’s own thatwe can talk about motivation. One thenneeds no outside stimulation. One wantsto do it.

With this in mind, we can reviewsome positive KITA personnel practicesthat were developed as attempts to in-still “motivation”:

1. Reducing Time Spent at Work.This represents a marvelous way of mo-tivating people to work – getting themoff the job! We have reduced (formallyand informally) the time spent on thejob over the last 50 or 60 years until weare finally on the way to the “61⁄2-dayweekend.”An interesting variant of thisapproach is the development of off-hourrecreation programs. The philosophyhere seems to be that those who play

4 harvard business review

B E ST O F H B R

Frederick Herzberg, Distinguished Pro-fessor of Management at the Universityof Utah in Salt Lake City, was head of thedepartment of psychology at Case West-ern Reserve University in Cleveland whenhe wrote this article. His writings includethe book Work and the Nature of Man(World, 1966).

Have spiraling wages motivated people?

Yes, to seek the next wage increase.

together, work together. The fact is thatmotivated people seek more hours ofwork, not fewer.

2. Spiraling Wages. Have these moti-vated people? Yes, to seek the next wageincrease. Some medievalists still can beheard to say that a good depression willget employees moving. They feel that ifrising wages don’t or won’t do the job,reducing them will.

3. Fringe Benefits. Industry has out-done the most welfare-minded of wel-fare states in dispensing cradle-to-the-grave succor. One company I know ofhad an informal “fringe benefit of themonth club” going for a while. The costof fringe benefits in this country hasreached approximately 25% of the wagedollar, and we still cry for motivation.

People spend less time working formore money and more security thanever before, and the trend cannot be reversed. These benefits are no longer rewards; they are rights. A 6-day week is inhuman, a 10-hour day is exploita-tion, extended medical coverage is abasic decency, and stock options are the salvation of American initiative.Unless the ante is continuously raised,the psychological reaction of employ-ees is that the company is turning backthe clock.

When industry began to realize thatboth the economic nerve and the lazynerve of their employees had insatiableappetites, it started to listen to the be-havioral scientists who, more out of ahumanist tradition than from scientificstudy, criticized management for notknowing how to deal with people. Thenext KITA easily followed.

4. Human Relations Training. Morethan 30 years of teaching and, in many instances, of practicing psychological approaches to handling people have resulted in costly human relations pro-grams and, in the end, the same ques-tion: How do you motivate workers?Here, too, escalations have taken place.Thirty years ago it was necessary to re-quest, “Please don’t spit on the floor.”Today the same admonition requiresthree “pleases” before the employee

feels that a superior has demonstratedthe psychologically proper attitude.

The failure of human relations train-ing to produce motivation led to theconclusion that supervisors or managersthemselves were not psychologicallytrue to themselves in their practice ofinterpersonal decency. So an advancedform of human relations KITA, sensitiv-ity training, was unfolded.

5. Sensitivity Training. Do you really,really understand yourself? Do youreally, really, really trust other people?Do you really, really, really, really coop-erate? The failure of sensitivity trainingis now being explained, by those whohave become opportunistic exploitersof the technique, as a failure to really(five times) conduct proper sensitivitytraining courses.

With the realization that there areonly temporary gains from comfort andeconomic and interpersonal KITA, per-sonnel managers concluded that thefault lay not in what they were doing,but in the employee’s failure to appre-ciate what they were doing. This openedup the field of communications, a newarea of “scientifically”sanctioned KITA.

6. Communications. The professor ofcommunications was invited to join thefaculty of management training pro-grams and help in making employeesunderstand what management was do-ing for them. House organs, briefing ses-sions, supervisory instruction on theimportance of communication, and allsorts of propaganda have proliferateduntil today there is even an Interna-tional Council of Industrial Editors. Butno motivation resulted, and the obviousthought occurred that perhaps man-agement was not hearing what the em-ployees were saying. That led to thenext KITA.

7. Two-Way Communication. Man-agement ordered morale surveys, sug-gestion plans, and group participationprograms. Then both management andemployees were communicating and lis-tening to each other more than ever,but without much improvement in mo-tivation.

The behavioral scientists began totake another look at their conceptionsand their data, and they took human re-lations one step further. A glimmer oftruth was beginning to show throughin the writings of the so-called higher-order-need psychologists. People, sothey said, want to actualize themselves.Unfortunately, the “actualizing” psy-chologists got mixed up with the humanrelations psychologists, and a new KITAemerged.

8. Job Participation. Though it maynot have been the theoretical intention,job participation often became a “givethem the big picture” approach. For ex-ample, if a man is tightening 10,000 nutsa day on an assembly line with a torquewrench, tell him he is building a Chevro-let. Another approach had the goal ofgiving employees a “feeling” that theyare determining, in some measure, whatthey do on the job. The goal was to pro-vide a sense of achievement rather thana substantive achievement in the task.Real achievement, of course, requires a task that makes it possible.

But still there was no motivation. Thisled to the inevitable conclusion that theemployees must be sick, and thereforeto the next KITA.

9. Employee Counseling. The initialuse of this form of KITA in a systematicfashion can be credited to the Haw-thorne experiment of the Western Elec-tric Company during the early 1930s. Atthat time, it was found that the em-ployees harbored irrational feelings thatwere interfering with the rational oper-ation of the factory. Counseling in thisinstance was a means of letting the em-ployees unburden themselves by talk-ing to someone about their problems.Although the counseling techniqueswere primitive, the program was largeindeed.

The counseling approach suffered asa result of experiences during WorldWar II, when the programs themselveswere found to be interfering with the op-eration of the organizations; the coun-selors had forgotten their role of be-nevolent listeners and were attempting

One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?

MOTIVATING PEOPLE january 2003 5

to do something about the problemsthat they heard about. Psychologicalcounseling, however, has managed tosurvive the negative impact of WorldWar II experiences and today is begin-ning to flourish with renewed sophisti-cation. But, alas, many of these pro-grams, like all the others, do not seem tohave lessened the pressure of demandsto find out how to motivate workers.

Since KITA results only in short-termmovement, it is safe to predict that the

cost of these programs will increasesteadily and new varieties will be devel-oped as old positive KITAs reach theirsatiation points.

Hygiene vs. MotivatorsLet me rephrase the perennial questionthis way: How do you install a generatorin an employee? A brief review of mymotivation-hygiene theory of job atti-tudes is required before theoretical andpractical suggestions can be offered. The

theory was first drawn from an exami-nation of events in the lives of engineersand accountants. At least 16 other in-vestigations, using a wide variety of pop-ulations (including some in the Com-munist countries), have since beencompleted, making the original researchone of the most replicated studies in thefield of job attitudes.

The findings of these studies, alongwith corroboration from many other investigations using different proce-


B E ST O F H B R

Percentagefrequency

50% 40 30 20 10 0 30 50%4010 20

Hyg

ien

e f

acto

rsIn

trin

sic

mot

ivat

ors

achievement

recognition

work itself

responsibility

advancement

growth

company policyand administration

supervision

relationship with supervisor

work conditions

salary

relationship with peers

personal life

relationship with subordinates

status

security

Factors characterizing ,844 events on the jobthat led to extreme dissatisfaction

Exhibit 1

Factors affecting job attitudes as reported in 12 investigations

Factors characterizing ,753 events on the jobthat led to extreme satisfaction

Hygiene 1969

Motivators 8131

Total of all factors contributing to job

dissatisfaction

Total of all factors contributing to job

satisfaction

Percentage frequency

80% 60 40 20 80%6040200

1 1

dures, suggest that the factors involvedin producing job satisfaction (and mo-tivation) are separate and distinct fromthe factors that lead to job dissatisfac-tion. (See Exhibit 1, which is further ex-plained below.) Since separate factorsneed to be considered, depending onwhether job satisfaction or job dissatis-faction is being examined, it follows that these two feelings are not oppo-sites of each other. The opposite of jobsatisfaction is not job dissatisfaction but, rather, no job satisfaction; and sim-ilarly, the opposite of job dissatisfactionis not job satisfaction, but no job dis-satisfaction.

Stating the concept presents a prob-lem in semantics, for we normally thinkof satisfaction and dissatisfaction as op-posites; i.e., what is not satisfying mustbe dissatisfying, and vice versa. Butwhen it comes to understanding thebehavior of people in their jobs, morethan a play on words is involved.

Two different needs of human beingsare involved here. One set of needs canbe thought of as stemming from hu-mankind’s animal nature – the built-indrive to avoid pain from the environ-ment, plus all the learned drives thatbecome conditioned to the basic bio-logical needs. For example, hunger, abasic biological drive, makes it neces-sary to earn money, and then money becomes a specific drive. The other setof needs relates to that unique humancharacteristic, the ability to achieve and,through achievement, to experiencepsychological growth. The stimuli forthe growth needs are tasks that inducegrowth; in the industrial setting, theyare the job content. Contrariwise, thestimuli inducing pain-avoidance behav-ior are found in the job environment.

The growth or motivator factors thatare intrinsic to the job are: achieve-ment, recognition for achievement, thework itself, responsibility, and growthor advancement. The dissatisfaction-avoidance or hygiene (KITA) factorsthat are extrinsic to the job include:company policy and administration,supervision, interpersonal relationships,

working conditions, salary, status, andsecurity.

A composite of the factors that areinvolved in causing job satisfaction andjob dissatisfaction, drawn from samplesof 1,685 employees, is shown in Exhibit 1.The results indicate that motivatorswere the primary cause of satisfaction,and hygiene factors the primary causeof unhappiness on the job. The employ-ees, studied in 12 different investiga-tions, included lower level supervisors,professional women, agricultural ad-ministrators, men about to retire from

management positions, hospital main-tenance personnel, manufacturing su-pervisors, nurses, food handlers, militaryofficers, engineers, scientists, house-keepers, teachers, technicians, femaleassemblers, accountants, Finnish fore-men, and Hungarian engineers.

They were asked what job events hadoccurred in their work that had led toextreme satisfaction or extreme dissat-isfaction on their part. Their responsesare broken down in the exhibit into per-centages of total “positive” job eventsand of total “negative” job events. (Thefigures total more than 100% on boththe “hygiene” and “motivators” sides because often at least two factors can beattributed to a single event; advance-ment, for instance, often accompaniesassumption of responsibility.)

To illustrate, a typical response in-volving achievement that had a nega-tive effect for the employee was,“I wasunhappy because I didn’t do the job suc-cessfully.”A typical response in the smallnumber of positive job events in the

company policy and administrationgrouping was,“I was happy because thecompany reorganized the section sothat I didn’t report any longer to theguy I didn’t get along with.”

As the lower right-hand part of theexhibit shows, of all the factors con-tributing to job satisfaction, 81% weremotivators. And of all the factors con-tributing to the employees’ dissatisfac-tion over their work, 69% involved hy-giene elements.

Eternal Triangle. There are three gen-eral philosophies of personnel manage-ment. The first is based on organiza-tional theory, the second on industrialengineering, and the third on behavioralscience.

Organizational theorists believe thathuman needs are either so irrational orso varied and adjustable to specific situ-ations that the major function of per-sonnel management is to be as prag-matic as the occasion demands. If jobsare organized in a proper manner, theyreason, the result will be the most effi-cient job structure, and the most favor-able job attitudes will follow as a matterof course.

Industrial engineers hold that hu-mankind is mechanistically orientedand economically motivated and thathuman needs are best met by attuningthe individual to the most efficient workprocess. The goal of personnel manage-ment therefore should be to concoct themost appropriate incentive system andto design the specific working condi-tions in a way that facilitates the mostefficient use of the human machine. Bystructuring jobs in a manner that leadsto the most efficient operation, engi-neers believe that they can obtain theoptimal organization of work and theproper work attitudes.

Behavioral scientists focus on groupsentiments, attitudes of individual em-ployees, and the organization’s socialand psychological climate. This persua-sion emphasizes one or more of the var-ious hygiene and motivator needs. Itsapproach to personnel management isgenerally to emphasize some form of



The opposite of job

dissatisfaction is not

job satisfaction, but

no job dissatisfaction.

trained correspondents was quite com-plex and challenging. But almost all in-dexes of performance and job attitudeswere low, and exit interviewing con-firmed that the challenge of the job ex-isted merely as words.

A job enrichment project was initi-ated in the form of an experiment withone group, designated as an achievingunit, having its job enriched by theprinciples described in Exhibit 2. A control group continued to do its job in the traditional way. (There were alsotwo “uncommitted” groups of corre-spondents formed to measure the so-called Hawthorne effect – that is, togauge whether productivity and atti-tudes toward the job changed artificiallymerely because employees sensed thatthe company was paying more atten-tion to them in doing something dif-ferent or novel. The results for these

groups were substantially the same asfor the control group, and for the sake of simplicity I do not deal with them in this summary.) No changes in hy-giene were introduced for either groupother than those that would have beenmade anyway, such as normal pay increases.

The changes for the achieving unitwere introduced in the first two months,averaging one per week of the sevenmotivators listed in Exhibit 2. At the endof six months the members of theachieving unit were found to be out-performing their counterparts in thecontrol group and, in addition, indicateda marked increase in their liking fortheir jobs. Other results showed that theachieving group had lower absenteeismand, subsequently, a much higher rateof promotion.

Exhibit 3 illustrates the changes in

merely enlarges the meaninglessnessof the job. Some examples of this ap-proach, and their effect, are:

• Challenging the employee by in-creasing the amount of production ex-pected. If each tightens 10,000 bolts a day, see if each can tighten 20,000bolts a day. The arithmetic involvedshows that multiplying zero by zero stillequals zero.

• Adding another meaningless task to the existing one, usually some rou-tine clerical activity. The arithmetic hereis adding zero to zero.

• Rotating the assignments of a num-ber of jobs that need to be enriched.This means washing dishes for a while,then washing silverware. The arithmeticis substituting one zero for another zero.

• Removing the most difficult partsof the assignment in order to free theworker to accomplish more of the less

challenging assignments. This tradi-tional industrial engineering approachamounts to subtraction in the hope ofaccomplishing addition.

These are common forms of horizon-tal loading that frequently come up inpreliminary brainstorming sessions ofjob enrichment. The principles of ver-tical loading have not all been workedout as yet, and they remain rather gen-eral, but I have furnished seven usefulstarting points for consideration in Exhibit 2.

A Successful Application. An exam-ple from a highly successful job enrich-ment experiment can illustrate the dis-tinction between horizontal and verticalloading of a job. The subjects of thisstudy were the stockholder correspon-dents employed by a very large corpo-ration. Seemingly, the task required ofthese carefully selected and highly


B E ST O F H B R

In attempting to enrich certain jobs, management

often reduces the personal contribution of employees

rather than giving them opportunities for growth.

human relations education, in the hopeof instilling healthy employee attitudesand an organizational climate that isconsidered to be felicitous to humanvalues. The belief is that proper atti-tudes will lead to efficient job and orga-nizational structure.

There is always a lively debate con-cerning the overall effectiveness of theapproaches of organizational theoristsand industrial engineers. Manifestly,both have achieved much. But the nag-ging question for behavioral scientistshas been: What is the cost in humanproblems that eventually cause more ex-pense to the organization–for instance,turnover, absenteeism, errors, violationof safety rules, strikes, restriction of out-put, higher wages, and greater fringebenefits? On the other hand, behavioralscientists are hard put to documentmuch manifest improvement in person-nel management, using their approach.

The motivation-hygiene theory sug-gests that work be enriched to bringabout effective utilization of personnel.Such a systematic attempt to motivateemployees by manipulating the moti-vator factors is just beginning. The termjob enrichment describes this embryonicmovement. An older term, job enlarge-ment, should be avoided because it isassociated with past failures stemmingfrom a misunderstanding of the prob-lem. Job enrichment provides the op-portunity for the employee’s psycho-logical growth, while job enlargementmerely makes a job structurally bigger.Since scientific job enrichment is verynew, this article only suggests the prin-ciples and practical steps that have re-cently emerged from several successfulexperiments in industry.

Job Loading. In attempting to enrichcertain jobs, management often reducesthe personal contribution of employeesrather than giving them opportunitiesfor growth in their accustomed jobs.Such endeavors, which I shall call hori-zontal job loading (as opposed to verti-cal loading, or providing motivator fac-tors), have been the problem of earlierjob enlargement programs. Job loading

performance, measured in February andMarch, before the study period began,and at the end of each month of thestudy period. The shareholder serviceindex represents quality of letters, in-cluding accuracy of information, andspeed of response to stockholders’ let-ters of inquiry. The index of a currentmonth was averaged into the average of the two prior months, which meansthat improvement was harder to obtainif the indexes of the previous monthswere low. The “achievers” were per-forming less well before the six-monthperiod started, and their performanceservice index continued to decline afterthe introduction of the motivators,evidently because of uncertainty aftertheir newly granted responsibilities. Inthe third month, however, performanceimproved, and soon the members of thisgroup had reached a high level ofaccomplishment.

Exhibit 4 shows the two groups’ atti-tudes toward their job, measured atthe end of March, just before the firstmotivator was introduced, and again at the end of September. The corre-spondents were asked 16 questions, allinvolving motivation. A typical one was,“As you see it, how many opportu-nities do you feel that you have in yourjob for making worthwhile contribu-tions?” The answers were scaled from 1 to 5, with 80 as the maximum possi-ble score. The achievers became muchmore positive about their job, while theattitude of the control unit remainedabout the same (the drop is not statis-tically significant).

How was the job of these correspon-dents restructured? Exhibit 5 lists thesuggestions made that were deemed tobe horizontal loading, and the actualvertical loading changes that were in-corporated in the job of the achievingunit. The capital letters under “Princi-ple”after “Vertical Loading”refer to thecorresponding letters in Exhibit 2. Thereader will note that the rejected formsof horizontal loading correspond closelyto the list of common manifestations I mentioned earlier.

Steps for Job Enrichment

Now that the motivator idea has beendescribed in practice, here are the stepsthat managers should take in institutingthe principle with their employees:

1. Select those jobs in which a) the in-vestment in industrial engineering doesnot make changes too costly, b) attitudesare poor, c) hygiene is becoming verycostly, and d) motivation will make adifference in performance.

2. Approach these jobs with the con-viction that they can be changed. Yearsof tradition have led managers to be-lieve that job content is sacrosanct andthe only scope of action that they haveis in ways of stimulating people.

3. Brainstorm a list of changes thatmay enrich the jobs, without concernfor their practicality.

4. Screen the list to eliminate sugges-tions that involve hygiene, rather thanactual motivation.

5. Screen the list for generalities, suchas “give them more responsibility,” thatare rarely followed in practice. Thismight seem obvious, but the motivator

words have never left industry; the sub-stance has just been rationalized andorganized out. Words like “responsibil-ity,”“growth,”“achievement,” and “chal-lenge,” for example, have been elevatedto the lyrics of the patriotic anthem forall organizations. It is the old problemtypified by the pledge of allegiance tothe flag being more important than con-tributions to the country – of followingthe form, rather than the substance.

6. Screen the list to eliminate any hor-izontal loading suggestions.

7. Avoid direct participation by theemployees whose jobs are to be en-riched. Ideas they have expressed previ-ously certainly constitute a valuablesource for recommended changes, buttheir direct involvement contaminatesthe process with human relations hy-giene and, more specifically, gives themonly a sense of making a contribution.The job is to be changed, and it is thecontent that will produce the moti-vation, not attitudes about being in-volved or the challenge inherent in set-ting up a job. That process will be overshortly, and it is what the employees will


Exhibit 2

Principles of vertical job loading

Principle

A. Removing some controls while retaining accountability

B. Increasing the accountability of individualsfor own work

C. Giving a person a complete natural unit of work (module, division, area, and so on)

D. Granting additional authority to employeesin their activity; job freedom

E. Making periodic reports directly availableto the workers themselves rather than tosupervisors

F. Introducing new and more difficult tasks not previously handled

G. Assigning individuals specific or specializedtasks, enabling them to become experts

Motivators involved

Responsibility and personal achievement

Responsibility and recognition

Responsibility, achievement,and recognition

Responsibility, achievement,and recognition

Internal recognition

Growth and learning

Responsibility, growth,and advancement


be doing from then on that will deter-mine their motivation. A sense of par-ticipation will result only in short-termmovement.

8. In the initial attempts at job en-richment, set up a controlled experi-ment. At least two equivalent groupsshould be chosen, one an experimentalunit in which the motivators are sys-tematically introduced over a period oftime, and the other one a control groupin which no changes are made. For bothgroups, hygiene should be allowed tofollow its natural course for the dura-tion of the experiment. Pre- and post-installation tests of performance andjob attitudes are necessary to evaluatethe effectiveness of the job enrichmentprogram. The attitude test must be lim-ited to motivator items in order to di-

vorce employees’ views of the jobs theyare given from all the surrounding hy-giene feelings that they might have.

9. Be prepared for a drop in perfor-mance in the experimental group thefirst few weeks. The changeover to anew job may lead to a temporary re-duction in efficiency.

10. Expect your first-line supervisorsto experience some anxiety and hostil-ity over the changes you are making.The anxiety comes from their fear thatthe changes will result in poorer per-formance for their unit. Hostility willarise when the employees start assum-ing what the supervisors regard as theirown responsibility for performance.The supervisor without checking du-ties to perform may then be left withlittle to do.

After successful experiment, however,the supervisors usually discover the supervisory and managerial functionsthey have neglected, or which werenever theirs because all their time wasgiven over to checking the work of theirsubordinates. For example, in the R&Ddivision of one large chemical companyI know of, the supervisors of the labo-ratory assistants were theoretically re-sponsible for their training and evalu-ation. These functions, however, hadcome to be performed in a routine, un-substantial fashion. After the job en-richment program, during which thesupervisors were not merely passive ob-servers of the assistants’ performance,the supervisors actually were devotingtheir time to reviewing performanceand administering thorough training.


B E ST O F H B R

achieving

control

Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept

Six-month study period

100

80

60

40

20

0

Exhibit 3

Employee performancein company experimentThree-month cumulative average

Shar

ehol

der

serv

ice

inde

x

Exhibit 4

Change in attitudes toward tasks in company experimentMean scores at begining and end of six-month period

Job

reac

tion

mea

n s

core

�

60

55

50

45

40

35

� achieving

� control

March September

What has been called an employee-centered style of supervision will comeabout not through education of super-visors, but by changing the jobs thatthey do.

• • •Job enrichment will not be a one-timeproposition, but a continuous manage-ment function. The initial changesshould last for a very long period oftime. There are a number of reasons for this:

• The changes should bring the job upto the level of challenge commensuratewith the skill that was hired.

• Those who have still more abilityeventually will be able to demonstrate it better and win promotion to higherlevel jobs.

• The very nature of motivators, as op-posed to hygiene factors, is that theyhave a much longer-term effect on em-ployees’ attitudes. It is possible that thejob will have to be enriched again, butthis will not occur as frequently as theneed for hygiene.

Not all jobs can be enriched, nor doall jobs need to be enriched. If only asmall percentage of the time and moneythat is now devoted to hygiene,however,were given to job enrichment efforts, thereturn in human satisfaction and eco-nomic gain would be one of the largestdividends that industry and society haveever reaped through their efforts at bet-ter personnel management.

The argument for job enrichment canbe summed up quite simply: If you haveemployees on a job, use them. If youcan’t use them on the job, get rid ofthem, either via automation or by se-lecting someone with lesser ability. Ifyou can’t use them and you can’t get ridof them, you will have a motivationproblem.

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Exhibit 5

Enlargement vs. enrichment of correspondents’ tasksin company experiment

Horizontal loading suggestions rejected

Firm quotas could be set for letters to be answered each day, usinga rate that would be hard to reach.

The secretaries could type the letters themselves, as well as composethem, or take on any other clerical functions.

All difficult or complex inquiries could be channeled to a few secretaries so that the remainder could achieve high rates of output.These jobs could be exchanged from time to time.

The secretaries could be rotated through units handling different customers and then sent back to their own units.

Vertical loading suggestions adopted Principle

Subject matter experts were appointed within each unit Gfor other members of the unit to consult before seeking supervisory help. (The supervisor had been answering all specialized and difficult questions.)

Correspondents signed their own names on letters. B(The supervisor had been signing all letters.)

The work of the more experienced correspondents was proofread Aless frequently by supervisors and was done at the correspondents’desks, dropping verification from 100% to 10%. (Previously, all correspondents’ letters had been checked by the supervisor.)

Production was discussed, but only in terms such as “a full day’s Dwork is expected.” As time went on, this was no longer mentioned.(Before, the group had been constantly reminded of the numberof letters that needed to be answered.)

Outgoing mail went directly to the mailroom without going over Asupervisors’ desks. (The letters had always been routed throughthe supervisors.)

Correspondents were encouraged to answer letters in a more Cpersonalized way. (Reliance on the form-letter approach had been standard practice.)

Each correspondent was held personally responsible for the B, Equality and accuracy of letters. (This responsibility had been the province of the supervisor and the verifier.)

Documents

One More Time:How Do You Motivate Employees? · One More Time:How Do You Motivate Employees? by Frederick Herzberg Reprint r0301f