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One More Time:How Do You MotivateEmployees?

by Frederick Herzberg

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ONE MORE TIME: HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES?

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HBR CLASSIC

One More Time:How Do You MotivateEmployees?by Frederick Herzberg

How many articles, books, speeches, and work-shops have pleaded plaintively, “How do I get anemployee to do what I want?” The psychology of motivation is tremendouslycomplex, and what has been unraveled with anydegree of assurance is small indeed. But the dismalratio of knowledge to speculation has not damp-ened the enthusiasm for new forms of snake oil thatare constantly coming on the market, many ofthem with academic testimonials. Doubtless thisarticle will have no depressing impact on the mar-ket for snake oil, but since the ideas expressed in ithave been tested in many corporations and other or-ganizations, it will help – I hope – to redress the im-balance in the aforementioned ratio.

plexity and difficulty involved in setting up and ad-ministering an incentive system. Show the person?This means a costly training program. We need asimple way. Every audience contains the “direct action” man-ager who shouts, “Kick the person!” And this typeof manager is right. The surest and least circumlo-cuted way of getting someone to do something is toadminister a kick in the pants – to give what mightbe called the KITA. There are various forms of KITA, and here aresome of them: Negative physical KITA. This is a literal applica-tion of the term and was frequently used in thepast. It has, however, three major drawbacks: (1) itis inelegant; (2) it contradicts the precious image ofbenevolence that most organizations cherish; and(3) since it is a physical attack, it directly stimu-lates the autonomic nervous system, and this often

To mark the 65th birthday of the Harvard Business Re-view, it’s appropriate to republish as a “Classic” one ofits landmark articles. Frederick Herzberg’s contributionhas sold more than 1.2 million reprints since its publica-tion in the January-February 1968 issue. By some300,000 copies over the runner-up, that is the largest saleof any of the thousands of articles that have ever ap-peared between HBR’s covers. Frederick Herzberg, Dis-tinguished Professor of Management at the University ofUtah, was head of the department of psychology at CaseWestern Reserve University when he wrote this article.His writings include the book Work and the Nature ofMan (World, 1966).

‘Motivating’ with KITA

In lectures to industry on the problem, I havefound that the audiences are anxious for quick andpractical answers, so I will begin with a straightfor-ward, practical formula for moving people. What is the simplest, surest, and most direct wayof getting someone to do something? Ask? But ifthe person responds that he or she does not want todo it, then that calls for psychological consultationto determine the reason for such obstinacy. Tell theperson? The response shows that he or she does notunderstand you, and now an expert in communica-tion methods has to be brought in to show you howto get through. Give the person a monetary incen-tive? I do not need to remind the reader of the com-

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1987 Copyright © 1987 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES

results in negative feedback – the employee mayjust kick you in return. These factors give rise tocertain taboos against negative physical KITA. In uncovering infinite sources of psychologicalvulnerabilities and the appropriate methods to playtunes on them, psychologists have come to the res-cue of those who are no longer permitted to usenegative physical KITA. “He took my rug away”; “Iwonder what she meant by that”; “The boss is al-ways going around me” – these symptomatic ex-pressions of ego sores that have been rubbed raw arethe result of application of: Negative psychological KITA. This has severaladvantages over negative physical KITA. First, thecruelty is not visible; the bleeding is internal andcomes much later. Second, since it affects the highercortical centers of the brain with its inhibitory pow-ers, it reduces the possibility of physical backlash.Third, since the number of psychological pains thata person can feel is almost infinite, the direction andsite possibilities of the KITA are increased manytimes. Fourth, the person administering the kickcan manage to be above it all and let the system ac-complish the dirty work. Fifth, those who practice itreceive some ego satisfaction (one-upmanship),whereas they would find drawing blood abhorrent.Finally, if the employee does complain, he or shecan always be accused of being paranoid; there is notangible evidence of an actual attack. Now, what does negative KITA accomplish? If Ikick you in the rear (physically or psychologically),who is motivated? I am motivated; you move! Neg-ative KITA does not lead to motivation, but tomovement. So: Positive KITA. Let us consider motivation. If Isay to you, “Do this for me or the company, and inreturn I will give you a reward, an incentive, morestatus, a promotion, all the quid pro quos that existin the industrial organization,” am I motivatingyou? The overwhelming opinion I receive frommanagement people is, “Yes, this is motivation.” I have a year-old Schnauzer. When it was a smallpuppy and I wanted it to move, I kicked it in therear and it moved. Now that I have finished its obe-dience training, I hold up a dog biscuit when I wantthe Schnauzer to move. In this instance, who is mo-tivated – I or the dog? The dog wants the biscuit,but it is I who want it to move. Again, I am the onewho is motivated, and the dog is the one whomoves. In this instance all I did was apply KITAfrontally; I exerted a pull instead of a push. Whenindustry wishes to use such positive KITAs, it hasavailable an incredible number and variety of dogbiscuits (jelly beans for humans) to wave in front ofemployees to get them to jump.

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Why is it that managerial audiences are quick tosee that negative KITA is not motivation, whilethey are almost unanimous in their judgment thatpositive KITA is motivation. It is because negativeKITA is rape, and positive KITA is seduction. But itis infinitely worse to be seduced than to be raped;the latter is an unfortunate occurrence, while theformer signifies that you were a party to your owndownfall. This is why positive KITA is so popular:it is a tradition; it is the American way. The organi-zation does not have to kick you; you kick yourself.

Myths About Motivation

Why is KITA not motivation? If I kick my dog(from the front or the back), he will move. And whenI want him to move again, what must I do? I mustkick him again. Similarly, I can charge a person’sbattery, and then recharge it, and recharge it again.But it is only when one has a generator of one’s ownthat we can talk about motivation. One then needsno outside stimulation. One wants to do it. With this in mind, we can review some positiveKITA personnel practices that were developed as at-tempts to instill “motivation”: 1. Reducing time spent at work. This representsa marvelous way of motivating people to work –getting them off the job! We have reduced (formallyand informally) the time spent on the job over thelast 50 or 60 years until we are finally on the way tothe “61⁄2-day weekend.” An interesting variant ofthis approach is the development of off-hour recre-ation programs. The philosophy here seems to bethat those who play together, work together. Thefact is that motivated people seek more hours ofwork, not fewer. 2. Spiraling wages. Have these motivated people?Yes, to seek the next wage increase. Some me-dievalists still can be heard to say that a good de-pression will get employees moving. They feel thatif rising wages don’t or won’t do the job, reducingthem will. 3. Fringe benefits. Industry has outdone the mostwelfare-minded of welfare states in dispensingcradle-to-the-grave succor. One company I know ofhad an informal “fringe benefit of the month club”going for a while. The cost of fringe benefits in thiscountry has reached approximately 25% of thewage dollar, and we still cry for motivation. People spend less time working for more moneyand more security than ever before, and the trendcannot be reversed. These benefits are no longer re-wards; they are rights. A 6-day week is inhuman, a10-hour day is exploitation, extended medical cov-erage is a basic decency, and stock options are the

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1987

salvation of American initiative. Unless the anteis continuously raised, the psychological reactionof employees is that the company is turning backthe clock. When industry began to realize that both the eco-nomic nerve and the lazy nerve of their employeeshad insatiable appetites, it started to listen to thebehavioral scientists who, more out of a humanisttradition than from scientific study, criticized man-agement for not knowing how to deal with people.The next KITA easily followed. 4. Human relations training. Over 30 years ofteaching and, in many instances, of practicing psy-chological approaches to handling people have re-sulted in costly human relations programs and, inthe end, the same question: How do you motivateworkers? Here, too, escalations have taken place.Thirty years ago it was necessary to request,“Please don’t spit on the floor.” Today the same ad-monition requires three “pleases” before the em-ployee feels that a superior has demonstrated thepsychologically proper attitude. The failure of human relations training to producemotivation led to the conclusion that supervisors ormanagers themselves were not psychologically trueto themselves in their practice of interpersonal de-cency. So an advanced form of human relationsKITA, sensitivity training, was unfolded. 5. Sensitivity training. Do you really, really un-derstand yourself? Do you really, really, really trustother people? Do you really, really, really, really co-operate? The failure of sensitivity training is nowbeing explained, by those who have become oppor-tunistic exploiters of the technique, as a failure toreally (five times) conduct proper sensitivity train-ing courses. With the realization that there are only temporarygains from comfort and economic and interpersonalKITA, personnel managers concluded that the faultlay not in what they were doing, but in the employ-ee’s failure to appreciate what they were doing. Thisopened up the field of communications, a wholenew area of “scientifically” sanctioned KITA. 6. Communications. The professor of communi-cations was invited to join the faculty of manage-ment training programs and help in making em-ployees understand what management was doingfor them. House organs, briefing sessions, supervi-sory instruction on the importance of communica-tion, and all sorts of propaganda have proliferateduntil today there is even an International Councilof Industrial Editors. But no motivation resulted,and the obvious thought occurred that perhapsmanagement was not hearing what the employeeswere saying. That led to the next KITA.


7. Two-way communication. Management or-dered morale surveys, suggestion plans, and groupparticipation programs. Then both employees andmanagement were communicating and listening toeach other more than ever, but without much im-provement in motivation. The behavioral scientists began to take anotherlook at their conceptions and their data, and theytook human relations one step further. A glimmer oftruth was beginning to show through in the writingsof the so-called higher-order-need psychologists.People, so they said, want to actualize themselves.Unfortunately, the “actualizing” psychologists gotmixed up with the human relations psychologists,and a new KITA emerged. 8. Job participation. Though it may not have beenthe theoretical intention, job participation often be-came a “give them the big picture” approach. Forexample, if a man is tightening 10,000 nuts a day onan assembly line with a torque wrench, tell him heis building a Chevrolet. Another approach had thegoal of giving employees a “feeling” that they aredetermining, in some measure, what they do on thejob. The goal was to provide a sense of achievementrather than a substantive achievement in the task.Real achievement, of course, requires a task thatmakes it possible. But still there was no motivation. This led to theinevitable conclusion that the employees must besick, and therefore to the next KITA. 9. Employee counseling. The initial use of thisform of KITA in a systematic fashion can be creditedto the Hawthorne experiment of the Western Elec-tric Company during the early 1930s. At that time,it was found that the employees harbored irrationalfeelings that were interfering with the rational oper-ation of the factory. Counseling in this instance wasa means of letting the employees unburden them-selves by talking to someone about their problems.Although the counseling techniques were primi-tive, the program was large indeed. The counseling approach suffered as a result ofexperiences during World War II, when the pro-grams themselves were found to be interferingwith the operation of the organizations; the coun-selors had forgotten their role of benevolent listen-ers and were attempting to do something about theproblems that they heard about. Psychologicalcounseling, however, has managed to survive thenegative impact of World War II experiences andtoday is beginning to flourish with renewed so-phistication. But, alas, many of these programs,like all the others, do not seem to have lessened thepressure of demands to find out how to motivateworkers.

7

Exhibit I Factors affecting job attitudes asreported in 12 investigations

Factors characterizing 1,844 eventson the job that ledto extreme dissatisfaction

Factors characterizing 1,753 eventson the job that ledto extreme satisfaction

Percentagefrequency

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

Achieve-ment

Recognition

Work itself

Responsibility

Advancement

Growth

Company policyand administration

Supervision

Relationship with supervisor

Work conditions

Salary

Relationship with peers

Personal life69

Relationship with subordinates31

Status

Security80%6040Ratio and percent

20 0 20 40 60 80%

Motivators 81

Hygiene 19

All factorscontributing tojob dissatisfaction

All factorscontributing tojob satisfaction

Since KITA results only in short-term move-ment, it is safe to predict that the cost of these pro-grams will increase steadily and new varieties willbe developed as old positive KITAs reach their sati-ation points.

Hygiene vs. Motivators

Let me rephrase the perennial question this way:How do you install a generator in an employee? Abrief review of my motivation-hygiene theory of job

8

attitudes is required before theoretical and practicalsuggestions can be offered. The theory was firstdrawn from an examination of events in the lives ofengineers and accountants. At least 16 other inves-tigations, using a wide variety of populations (in-cluding some in the Communist countries), havesince been completed, making the original researchone of the most replicated studies in the field of jobattitudes. The findings of these studies, along with corrobo-ration from many other investigations using differ-



ent procedures, suggest that the factors involved inproducing job satisfaction (and motivation) are sep-arate and distinct from the factors that lead to jobdissatisfaction. Since separate factors need to beconsidered, depending on whether job satisfactionor job dissatisfaction is being examined, it followsthat these two feelings are not opposites of eachother. The opposite of job satisfaction is not job dis-satisfaction but, rather, no job satisfaction; andsimilarly, the opposite of job dissatisfaction is notjob satisfaction, but no job dissatisfaction. Stating the concept presents a problem in seman-tics, for we normally think of satisfaction and dis-satisfaction as opposites – i.e., what is not satisfy-ing must be dissatisfying, and vice versa. But whenit comes to understanding the behavior of people intheir jobs, more than a play on words is involved. Two different needs of human beings are involvedhere. One set of needs can be thought of as stemmingfrom humankind’s animal nature – the built-in driveto avoid pain from the environment, plus all thelearned drives that become conditioned to the basicbiological needs. For example, hunger, a basic biolog-ical drive, makes it necessary to earn money, andthen money becomes a specific drive. The other setof needs relates to that unique human characteristic,the ability to achieve and, through achievement, toexperience psychological growth. The stimuli for thegrowth needs are tasks that induce growth; in the in-dustrial setting, they are the job content. Contrari-wise, the stimuli inducing pain-avoidance behaviorare found in the job environment. The growth or motivator factors that are intrin-sic to the job are: achievement, recognition forachievement, the work itself, responsibility, andgrowth or advancement. The dissatisfaction-avoid-ance or hygiene (KITA) factors that are extrinsic tothe job include: company policy and administra-tion, supervision, interpersonal relationships,working conditions, salary, status, and security. A composite of the factors that are involved incausing job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction,drawn from samples of 1,685 employees, is shownin Exhibit I. The results indicate that motivatorswere the primary cause of satisfaction, and hygienefactors the primary cause of unhappiness on the job.The employees, studied in 12 different investiga-tions, included lower level supervisors, profession-al women, agricultural administrators, men aboutto retire from management positions, hospitalmaintenance personnel, manufacturing supervi-sors, nurses, food handlers, military officers, engi-neers, scientists, housekeepers, teachers, techni-cians, female assemblers, accountants, Finnishforemen, and Hungarian engineers.


They were asked what job events had occurred intheir work that had led to extreme satisfaction or ex-treme dissatisfaction on their part. Their responsesare broken down in the exhibit into percentages oftotal “positive” job events and of total “negative”job events. (The figures total more than 100% onboth the “hygiene” and “motivators” sides becauseoften at least two factors can be attributed to a sin-gle event; advancement, for instance, often accom-panies assumption of responsibility.) To illustrate, a typical response involving achieve-ment that had a negative effect for the employee was,“I was unhappy because I didn’t do the job success-fully.” A typical response in the small number ofpositive job events in the company policy and ad-ministration grouping was, “I was happy because thecompany reorganized the section so that I didn’t re-port any longer to the guy I didn’t get along with.” As the lower right-hand part of the exhibit shows,of all the factors contributing to job satisfaction,81% were motivators. And of all the factors con-tributing to the employees’ dissatisfaction overtheir work, 69% involved hygiene elements. Eternal triangle. There are three general philoso-phies of personnel management. The first is basedon organizational theory, the second on industrialengineering, and the third on behavioral science. Organizational theorists believe that humanneeds are either so irrational or so varied and ad-justable to specific situations that the major func-tion of personnel management is to be as pragmaticas the occasion demands. If jobs are organized in aproper manner, they reason, the result will be themost efficient job structure, and the most favorablejob attitudes will follow as a matter of course. Industrial engineers hold that humankind ismechanistically oriented and economically moti-vated and that human needs are best met by attun-ing the individual to the most efficient work pro-cess. The goal of personnel management thereforeshould be to concoct the most appropriate incen-tive system and to design the specific working con-ditions in a way that facilitates the most efficientuse of the human machine. By structuring jobs in amanner that leads to the most efficient operation,engineers believe that they can obtain the optimalorganization of work and the proper work attitudes. Behavioral scientists focus on group sentiments,attitudes of individual employees, and the organiza-tion’s social and psychological climate. This persua-sion emphasizes one or more of the varioushygiene and motivator needs. Its approach to person-nel management is generally to emphasize someform of human relations education, in the hope of in-stilling healthy employee attitudes and an organiza-

9

tional climate that is considered to be felicitous tohuman values. The belief is that proper attitudes willlead to efficient job and organizational structure. There is always a lively debate about the overalleffectiveness of the approaches of organizationaltheorists and industrial engineers. Manifestly bothhave achieved much. But the nagging question forbehavorial scientists has been: What is the cost inhuman problems that eventually cause more ex-pense to the organization – for instance, turnover,absenteeism, errors, violation of safety rules,strikes, restriction of output, higher wages, andgreater fringe benefits? On the other hand, behav-ioral scientists are hard put to document muchmanifest improvement in personnel management,using their approach. The three philosophies can be depicted as a trian-gle, as is done in Exhibit II, with each persuasionclaiming the apex angle. The motivation-hygienetheory claims the same angle as industrial engi-neering, but for opposite goals. Rather than ration-alizing the work to increase efficiency, the theorysuggests that work be enriched to bring about effec-tive utilization of personnel. Such a systematic at-tempt to motivate employees by manipulating themotivator factors is just beginning. The term job enrichment describes this embry-onic movement. An older term, job enlargement,should be avoided because it is associated with pastfailures stemming from a misunderstanding of theproblem. Job enrichment provides the opportunityfor the employee’s psychological growth, while jobenlargement merely makes a job structurally big-ger. Since scientific job enrichment is very new,this article only suggests the principles and practi-cal steps that have recently emerged from severalsuccessful experiments in industry. Job loading. In attempting to enrich certain jobs,management often reduces the personal contribu-tion of employees rather than giving them opportu-nities for growth in their accustomed jobs. Such en-deavors, which I shall call horizontal job loading (asopposed to vertical loading, or providing motivatorfactors), have been the problem of earlier job en-largement programs. Job loading merely enlargesthe meaninglessness of the job. Some examples ofthis approach, and their effect, are: Challenging the employee by increasing theamount of production expected. If each tightens10,000 bolts a day, see if each can tighten 20,000bolts a day. The arithmetic involved shows thatmultiplying zero by zero still equals zero. Adding another meaningless task to the existingone, usually some routine clerical activity. Thearithmetic here is adding zero to zero.

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Exhibit II ‘Triangle’ of philosophies of personnelmanagement

AIndustrial engineeringjobs

BOrganizational theorywork flow

CBehavioral scienceattitudes

Exhibit III Principles of vertical job loading

Principle

A Removing some controls whileA retaining accountability

B Increasing the accountabilityB of individuals for own work

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

D Granting additional authority toD employees in their activity; jobD freedom

EEEE

Making periodic reportsdirectly available to theworkers themselves ratherthan to supervisors

Motivators involved

Responsibility and personalachievement

Responsibility and recognition

Responsibility, achievement, andrecognition

Responsibility, achievement, andrecognition

Internal recognition

F Introducing new and moreE difficult tasks not previouslyE handled

G Assigning individuals specificG or specialized tasks, enablingG them to become experts

Growth and learning

Responsibility, growth, andadvancement

Rotating the assignments of a number of jobs thatneed to be enriched. This means washing dishes fora while, then washing silverware. The arithmetic issubstituting one zero for another zero. Removing the most difficult parts of the assign-ment in order to free the worker to accomplish moreof the less challenging assignments. This traditionalindustrial engineering approach amounts to sub-traction in the hope of accomplishing addition. These are common forms of horizontal loadingthat frequently come up in preliminary brainstorm-ing sessions of job enrichment. The principles ofvertical loading have not all been worked out as yet,and they remain rather general, but I have fur-



nished seven useful starting points for considera-tion in Exhibit III. A successful application. An example from ahighly successful job enrichment experiment can il-lustrate the distinction between horizontal and ver-tical loading of a job. The subjects of this study werethe stockholder correspondents employed by a verylarge corporation. Seemingly, the task required ofthese carefully selected and highly trained corre-spondents was quite complex and challenging. Butalmost all indexes of performance and job attitudeswere low, and exit interviewing confirmed that thechallenge of the job existed merely as words. A job enrichment project was initiated in theform of an experiment with one group, designatedas an achieving unit, having its job enriched by theprinciples described in Exhibit III. A control groupcontinued to do its job in the traditional way.(There were also two “uncommitted” groups of cor-respondents formed to measure the so-calledHawthorne Effect – that is, to gauge whether pro-ductivity and attitudes toward the job changed arti-ficially merely because employees sensed that thecompany was paying more attention to them indoing something different or novel. The results forthese groups were substantially the same as for thecontrol group, and for the sake of simplicity I do notdeal with them in this summary.) No changes inhygiene were introduced for either group other thanthose that would have been made anyway, such asnormal pay increases. The changes for the achieving unit were intro-duced in the first two months, averaging one perweek of the seven motivators listed in Exhibit III.At the end of six months the members of theachieving unit were found to be outperformingtheir counterparts in the control group, and in addi-tion indicated a marked increase in their liking fortheir jobs. Other results showed that the achievinggroup had lower absenteeism and, subsequently, amuch higher rate of promotion. Exhibit IV illustrates the changes in performance,measured in February and March, before the studyperiod began, and at the end of each month of thestudy period. The shareholder service index repre-sents quality of letters, including accuracy of infor-mation, and speed of response to stockholders’ let-ters of inquiry. The index of a current month wasaveraged into the average of the two prior months,which means that improvement was harder to ob-tain if the indexes of the previous months were low.The “achievers” were performing less well beforethe six-month period started, and their performanceservice index continued to decline after the intro-duction of the motivators, evidently because of un-


Exhibit IV Shareholder service index in companyexperimentThree-month cumulative average

Performance index

100

Achieving

80

60Control

40

20

0Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept

Six-month study period

certainty after their newly granted responsibilities.In the third month, however, performance im-proved, and soon the members of this group hadreached a high level of accomplishment. Exhibit V shows the two groups’ attitudes towardtheir job, measured at the end of March, just beforethe first motivator was introduced, and again at theend of September. The correspondents were asked16 questions, all involving motivation. A typicalone was, “As you see it, how many opportunities doyou feel that you have in your job for makingworthwhile contributions?” The answers werescaled from 1 to 5, with 80 as the maximum possi-ble score. The achievers became much more posi-tive about their job, while the attitude of the con-trol unit remained about the same (the drop is notstatistically significant). How was the job of these correspondents restruc-tured? Exhibit VI lists the suggestions made thatwere deemed to be horizontal loading, and the actu-al vertical loading changes that were incorporatedin the job of the achieving unit. The capital lettersunder “Principle” after “Vertical loading” refer to

11


Exhibit V Changes in attitudes toward tasks incompany experimentChanges in mean scores over six-monthperiod

Job reaction mean score

60

55

Achieving

50

45

40Control

35MarchTime between surveys

September

the corresponding letters in Exhibit III. The readerwill note that the rejected forms of horizontal load-ing correspond closely to the list of common mani-festations I mentioned earlier.

Steps for Job Enrichment

Now that the motivator idea has been described inpractice, here are the steps that managers should takein instituting the principle with their employees: 1. Select those jobs in which (a) the investment inindustrial engineering does not make changes toocostly, (b) attitudes are poor, (c) hygiene is becom-ing very costly, and (d) motivation will make a dif-ference in performance. 2. Approach these jobs with the conviction thatthey can be changed. Years of tradition have ledmanagers to believe that the content of the jobs issacrosanct and the only scope of action that theyhave is in ways of stimulating people. 3. Brainstorm a list of changes that may enrichthe jobs, without concern for their practicality. 4. Screen the list to eliminate suggestions that in-volve hygiene, rather than actual motivation. 5. Screen the list for generalities, such as “givethem more responsibility,” that are rarely followedin practice. This might seem obvious, but the moti-

12

vator words have never left industry; the substancehas just been rationalized and organized out. Wordslike “responsibility,” “growth,” “achievement,”and “challenge,” for example, have been elevated tothe lyrics of the patriotic anthem for all organiza-tions. It is the old problem typified by the pledge ofallegiance to the flag being more important thancontributions to the country – of following theform, rather than the substance. 6. Screen the list to eliminate any horizontalloading suggestions. 7. Avoid direct participation by the employeeswhose jobs are to be enriched. Ideas they have ex-pressed previously certainly constitute a valuablesource for recommended changes, but their directinvolvement contaminates the process with hu-man relations hygiene and, more specifically, givesthem only a sense of making a contribution. Thejob is to be changed, and it is the content that willproduce the motivation, not attitudes about beinginvolved or the challenge inherent in setting up ajob. That process will be over shortly, and it is whatthe employees will be doing from then on that willdetermine their motivation. A sense of participa-tion will result only in short-term movement. 8. In the initial attempts at job enrichment, setup a controlled experiment. At least two equivalentgroups should be chosen, one an experimental unitin which the motivators are systematically intro-duced over a period of time, and the other one a con-trol group in which no changes are made. For bothgroups, hygiene should be allowed to follow its nat-ural course for the duration of the experiment. Pre-and post-installation tests of performance and jobattitudes are necessary to evaluate the effectivenessof the job enrichment program. The attitude testmust be limited to motivator items in order to di-vorce employees’ views of the jobs they are givenfrom all the surrounding hygiene feelings that theymight have. 9. Be prepared for a drop in performance in the ex-perimental group the first few weeks. The change-over to a new job may lead to a temporary reductionin efficiency. 10. Expect your first-line supervisors to experi-ence some anxiety and hostility over the changesyou are making. The anxiety comes from their fearthat the changes will result in poorer performancefor their unit. Hostility will arise when the employ-ees start assuming what the supervisors regard astheir own responsibility for performance. The su-pervisor without checking duties to perform maythen be left with little to do. After successful experiment, however, the super-visors usually discover the supervisory and man-


Exhibit VI Enlargement vs. enrichment of correspondents’tasks in company experiment

Horizontal loading suggestionsrejected

Vertical loading suggestionsadopted

Principle

Firm quotas could be set for letters to be answeredeach day, using a rate which would be hard to reach.

The secretaries could type the letters themselves, aswell as compose them, or take on any other clericalfunctions.

All difficult or complex inquiries could be channeled toa few secretaries so that the remainder could achievehigh rates of output. These jobs could be exchangedfrom time to time.

The secretaries could be rotated through units handlingdifferent customers, and then sent back to their ownunits.

Subject matter experts were appointed within each unitfor other members of the unit to consult with beforeseeking supervisory help. (The supervisor had been an-swering all specialized and difficult questions.)

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

The work of the more experienced correspondents wasproofread less frequently by supervisors and was doneat correspondents’ desks, dropping verification from100% to 10%. (Previously, all correspondents’ lettershad been checked by the supervisor.)

Production was discussed, but only in terms such as“a full day’s work is expected.” As time went on, thiswas no longer mentioned. (Before, the group had beenconstantly reminded of the number of letters that need-ed to be answered.)

Outgoing mail went directly to the mailroom without go-ing over supervisors’ desks. (The letters had alwaysbeen routed through the supervisors.)

Correspondents were encouraged to answer letters in amore personalized way. (Reliance on the form-letter ap-proach had been standard practice.)

Each correspondents was held personally responsible forthe quality and accuracy of letters. (This responsibilityhad been the province of the supervisor and theverifier.)

G

B

A

D

A

C

B, E

agerial functions they have neglected, or whichwere never theirs because all their time was givenover to checking the work of their subordinates. Forexample, in the R&D division of one large chemicalcompany I know of, the supervisors of the laborato-ry assistants were theoretically responsible fortheir training and evaluation. These functions,however, had come to be performed in a routine,unsubstantial fashion. After the job enrichmentprogram, during which the supervisors were notmerely passive observers of the assistants’ perfor-mance, the supervisors actually were devoting theirtime to reviewing performance and administeringthorough training. What has been called an employee-centered styleof supervision will come about not through educa-tion of supervisors, but by changing the jobs thatthey do.

Concluding Note

Job enrichment will not be a one-time proposi-tion, but a continuous management function. Theinitial changes should last for a very long period oftime. There are a number of reasons for this: The changes should bring the job up to the levelof challenge commensurate with the skill thatwas hired.

Those who have still more ability eventually willbe able to demonstrate it better and win promotionto higher level jobs. The very nature of motivators, as opposed to hy-giene factors, is that they have a much longer termeffect on employees’ attitudes. Perhaps the job willhave to be enriched again, but this will not occur asfrequently as the need for hygiene. Not all jobs can be enriched, nor do all jobs needto be enriched. If only a small percentage of thetime and money that is now devoted to hygiene,however, were given to job enrichment efforts, thereturn in human satisfaction and economic gainwould be one of the largest dividends that industryand society have ever reaped through their efforts atbetter personnel management. The argument for job enrichment can be summedup quite simply: if you have employees on a job, usethem. If you can’t use them on the job, get rid ofthem, either via automation or by selecting some-one with lesser ability. If you can’t use them andyou can’t get rid of them, you will have a motiva-tion problem.

Reprint 87507

[See Retrospective Commentary on following page.]

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1987 13

Retrospective Commentary

I wrote this article at the height ofthe attention on improving employ-ee performance through various(contrived) psychological approach-es to human relations. I tried to re-dress industrial social scientists’overconcern about how to treatworkers to the neglect of how to de-sign the work itself. The first part of the article distin-guishes between motivation andmovement, a distinction that mostwriting on motivation misses.Movement is a function of fear ofpunishment or failure to get extrin-sic rewards. It is the typical proce-dure used in animal training and itscounterpart, behavioral modifica-tion techniques for humans. Motiva-tion is a function of growth from

getting intrinsic rewards out of in-teresting and challenging work. While the immediate behavioralresults from movement and motiva-tion appear alike, their dynamics,which produce vastly different long-term consequences, are different.Movement requires constant rein-forcement and stresses short-termresults. To get a reaction, manage-ment must constantly enhance theextrinsic rewards for movement. If Iget a bonus of $1,000 one year and$500 the next, I am getting extra re-wards both years, but psychological-ly I have taken a $500 salary cut. Motivation is based on growthneeds. It is an internal engine, andits benefits show up over a long peri-od of time. Because the ultimate re-

ward in motivation is personalgrowth, people don’t need to be re-warded incrementally. I write abook – a big accomplishment. ThenI write an article – a lesser accom-plishment, but nevertheless an addi-tion to my personal growth. For this article, I invented theacronym KITA (kick in the ass) to de-scribe the movement technique. Theinelegance of the term offendedthose who consider good treatment amotivating strategy, regardless of thenature of the work itself. In this plainlanguage I tried to spotlight the ani-mal approach to dealing with humanbeings that characterizes so much ofour behavioral science intervention. The article’s popularity stems ingreat part from readers’ recognition

Figure A How the hygiene-motivator factors affectjob attitudes in six countries

All factors contributing tojob dissatisfaction

All factors contributing tojob satisfaction

Percentage100% 80

61

60 40 20 0

8

20 40 60 80 100%

Japan39 92

70

India30

34

66

72

South Africa28

20

86

86

Zambia

12

15

85

69

Italy31

38

62

60

Israel

40

33

67

Hygiene Motivators

that KITA underlies the assumedbenevolence of personnel practices.If I were writing “One More Time”in 1987, I would emphasize the im-portant, positive role of organiza-tional behaviorists more than I didin 1968. We can certainly learn toget along better on the job. Reducedworkplace tension through conge-nial relations is a necessary ingredi-ent of a pleasant environment. The second part of the article de-scribes my motivation-hygiene theo-ry. It suggests that environmentalfactors (hygienes) can at best createno dissatisfaction on the job, andtheir absence creates dissatisfaction.In contrast, what makes people hap-py on the job and motivates them arethe job content factors (motivators).The controversy surrounding theseconcepts continues to this day. While the original 12 studies weremostly American (they also includedFinnish supervisors and Hungarianengineers), the results have been

Figure B Sensory ingredients of job enrichment

Directfeedback

Controloverresources

New learning

Feeling Client Feeling

Directcommuni-cationsauthority

Product

Unique expertise

Self-scheduling

Personalaccountability

Figure C Client relationships in an Air Force function

Engineers Manager

Supervisor

Materialinventoryclerk

Sheetmetalmechanic Avionics

mechanicTestpilot

Damageevaluator

SchedulerLinemechanic

Support shoppersonnel


Retrospective Commentary (continued)

replicated throughout the world. Asampling of recent foreign investiga-tions, which the reader can comparewith the first American studies de-tailed in Exhibit I in “One MoreTime,” appears in Figure A. The sim-ilarity of the profiles is worth noting. The 1970s was the decade of jobenrichment (discussed in the thirdpart of the article), sometimes calledjob design or redesign by opponentsof the motivation-hygiene theory.Since the first trial-and-error studiesat AT&T, experience has producedrefinements of the procedures for jobenrichment and the goals for achiev-ing it. I like to illustrate them in thewheel shown in Figure B. This diagram reflects my convic-tion that the present-day abstractionof work has shut out feelings from thejob content. Finance, for example,has become the focus of attention inmost businesses, and nothing is moreabstract and devoid of feeling. Part ofthe blame can be laid to electroniccommunication, which promotes de-tachment and abstraction. Job enrich-ment grows out of knowing yourproduct and your client with feeling,not just intellectually. With reference to the motivatoringredients discussed in the 1968article, “recognition for achieve-ment” translates into “direct feed-back” in Figure B. The wheel in Fig-ure B shows this feedback to comechiefly from the client and productof the work itself, not from the su-pervisor (except in the case of new

hires). The motivator factor “respon-sibility” translates into a number ofingredients: self-scheduling, author-ity to communicate, control of re-sources, and accountability. Finally,the motivator factors “advance-ment” and “growth” translate intothe central dynamic of new learningleading to unique expertise. Thefeeling of satisfaction is also indicat-ed as a dynamic of learning fromclients and products. The key to job enrichment is nur-ture of a client relationship ratherthan a functional or hierarchical re-lationship. Let me illustrate with adiagram of relationships in an air-plane overhaul project carried outfor the U.S. Air Force (Figure C). Theavionics mechanic’s external clientis the test pilot, and although he re-ports to his supervisor, his supervi-sor serves him. The sheet metal me-chanic and the line mechanic servethe avionics mechanic. And so onback into the system. By backing into the system, youcan identify who serves whom – notwho reports to whom – which is crit-ical in trying to enrich jobs. Youidentify the external client, then thecore jobs, or internal client jobs, serv-ing that client. You first enrich thecore jobs with the ingredients shownin Figure B and then enrich the corejobs that serve these internal clients. During the 1970s, critics predictedthat job enrichment would reducethe number of employees. Ironically,the restructuring and downsizing of

U.S. companies during the 1980shave often serendipitously producedjob enrichment. With fewer employ-ees performing the same tasks, somejob enrichment was inevitable. Butthe greater efficiency of enrichedjobs ultimately leads to a competi-tive edge and more jobs. Today, we seem to be losingground to KITA. It’s all the bottomline, as the expression goes. Thework ethic and quality of worklifemovement have succumbed to thepragmatics of worldwide competi-tion and the escalation of manage-ment direction by the abstract fieldsof finance and marketing – as op-posed to production and sales, wherepalpable knowledge of clients andproducts resides. These abstractfields are more conducive to move-ment than to motivation. I find thenew entrants in the world of workon the whole a passionless lot intenton serving financial indexes ratherthan clients and products. Motiva-tion encompasses passion; move-ment is sterile. To return to “One More Time”: Idon’t think I would write it muchdifferently today, though I would in-clude the knowledge gained fromrecent job enrichment experiments.The distinction between movementand motivation is still true, and mo-tivation-hygiene theory is still aframework with which to evaluateactions. Job enrichment remains thekey to designing work that moti-vates employees.

16 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1987

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