Motivation - Herzberg's Two Factor Theory

Every day, people have to wake up early, brush teeth, fight traffic, wait in line at the elevator and, in factories and offices, do things only for their working situation.

This imposes the obligation to Administrators observe an important aspect of business management: motivation. Why we work? Why we day to day go to a certain place to meet people and do activities that don't necessarily please us? What drives us when we try something?

Motivation is an important key to the manager: motivation can generate emotion, which translates into a feeling and a feeling can lead to action.

A psychologist who looked with intelligence for this matter was Frederick Herzberg. He separated the motivations for working in two groups:

1. Group of intrinsic factors, the motivators (M factors) are the personal reasons, internal to us all. Feel that what we do is important for the company, or the boss, or the team; feel that our work must be done carefully as it influences and makes life better for others. To feel that our work can make us better, with more knowledge and maturity.

2. Group of extrinsic, maintenance or hygiene factors (H factors) are the external conditions in which work is performed. The salary, benefits, ergonomic conditions - such as light and chair -, the mood among the people, the general policies of the company.

The great Herzberg's insight was notice that the internal factors (M) can make us more or less satisfied but external factors (H) has only the power to make us more or less dissatisfied. That is, to Herzberg, dissatisfaction is not the opposite of satisfaction. A person can be satisfied with the work and not satisfied with the management - at the same time. To facilitate modeling, Herzberg proposed that we take a look at two rules:

	In	Out
Motivators	SATISFIED	NOT SATISFIED
Higienic	NOT DISSATISFIED	DISSATISFIED

The intelligence of Herzberg was the realization that external reasons are not able to generate satisfaction, they are only able to reduce dissatisfaction. We often say that money does not bring happiness. Herzberg says money can only decrease unhappiness.

If we agree with this, we realize that what the company itself can do to increase satisfaction is very little, it may help to reduce dissatisfaction. The increase in satisfaction, linked to internal factors, personal, depends directly on the contact with the employee, depends directly of our ability, as managers, to increase the components of team satisfaction. This greatly increases our responsibility as managers of people, before all the other roles.

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