Since companies are made up of individuals, the existence of a Psychology of Work and organizations is necessary to study the functioning of these within the organizations.

Within this psychology of organizations, the psychologist Frederick Herzberg stood out, who became interested in the study of job satisfaction and created the well-known Herzberg’s dual factor theory .

Who was Frederick Herzberg?

Frederick Herzberg (1923-2000) was an American psychologist who became one of the most renowned people in the field of business management and administration . Thanks to his Theory of the Dual Factor and the implementation of work enrichment, he gained great recognition within the field of psychology of work and organizations, an area in which proposals that lead to a more efficient management of human capital, as well as well-being in the company, are always welcome.

What is Herzberg’s Dual Factor Theory?

Also known as Herzberg’s Motivation and Hygiene Theory , it hypothesizes about the factors that produce satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the worker and how this covers his labour needs.

The basis of the theory is that the elements that cause job satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the worker are of a totally different nature. Likewise, the theory is rooted in the idea that the person has two types of needs: the need to avoid pain or events that produce discomfort and, on the other hand, the need or desire to progress and mature both emotionally and intellectually.

When this system of needs is applied to the work environment, these require different incentives, hence the term duality. This duality consists of two types of factors that operate in labour motivation: hygienic factors and motivation factors . Both allow us to explain a good part of the work dynamics that take place within organisations.

The two Herzberg factors

As mentioned above, the theory proposed by Herzberg consists of two factors
that modulate the worker’s motivation.

Hygiene factors

Hygiene factors include those factors that are extrinsic to the worker and are mainly associated with job dissatisfaction.

Hygiene factors are located in the environment surrounding the worker and include the conditions that determine the work carried out by the worker. These factors are said to be extrinsic because they depend on the decisions of the company and the way in which it manages them.

According to Herzberg, throughout history the people in charge of directing and managing the companies only considered hygienic factors as a means to motivate or punish the worker. Companies and industries used wage rewards and incentives, flexible company policies and external rewards with the ultimate goal of getting workers to produce more.

The factors that Herzberg catalogued as hygienic are:

  • Salary and other economic incentives or materials
  • Company and organisational policies
  • Affinity links with peers
  • Physical context where the worker carries out his/her tasks
  • Worker surveillance and supervision
  • Status or position held by the worker within the company
  • Workplace stability

However, the research carried out by Herzberg concluded that these factors were only useful to decrease or avoid dissatisfaction in workers, but not to generate genuine satisfaction with their work . Furthermore, when the worker considered that these factors were not excellent or appropriate enough, they generated dissatisfaction very quickly.

Motivation factors

Unlike hygiene factors, motivation factors are intrinsic to workers, since they are directly associated with satisfaction with both the position and the nature or type of tasks that the person performs within the company.

These motivational factors would indeed be under the domain of the individual, and include the feelings or perception that the worker has about his/her growth and development within the company, as well as professional recognition, the desire for self-realization and the need for responsibility, etc.

For a long time, jobs were created with the intention of covering the efficiency and economic needs of the company , eliminating any possibility of the worker feeling motivated to grow or to develop his work creativity, causing a feeling of indifference and unwillingness.

These intrinsic motivational factors are:

  • Stimulating work faculty
  • Feelings of self-realization
  • Achievements
  • Recognition by superiors
  • Possibility of increasing responsibilities

Conclusions

After identifying all these factors, Herzberg drew a series of conclusions that completed his theory:

  • A bad environment causes immediate dissatisfaction in the workers, but a healthy work environment does not guarantee their satisfaction.
  • Avoiding job dissatisfaction is just as important as promoting job satisfaction .
  • Hygiene factors and motivation factors are activated and deactivated independently, and the same person can have characteristics of both factors.
  • Hygiene factors are all equally relevant.
  • The improvement and development of hygiene factors has positive short-term effects .
  • .

  • Hygiene factors are temporary and cyclical. So the worker renews these needs as time goes by.

Task enrichment according to this psychologist

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, Frederick Herzberg also gained his popularity within work psychology thanks to the introduction of task enrichment. Herzberg himself developed a series of tips to improve worker satisfaction.

These tips are:

  • Abolish or eliminate certain controls while maintaining the responsibility of the worker for his/her own task.
  • Increase the number of responsibilities that fall on each worker.
  • Less authority from the top of the company and more freedom for the workers.
  • Feedback on the results and objectives of each worker
  • Assignment and distribution of new and different tasks, increasing the degree of complexity of these.
  • Assignment of tasks that allow the worker to demonstrate his skills and progress professionally .