Worksheets'Satisfiers' and 'Motivators'
Total questions: 8
Worksheet time: 12mins
Reorder the following
It is logical to suppose that things like good labour relations, good working conditions, job security,
good wages, and benefits such as sick pay, paid holidays and a pension are incentives
that motivate workers. But in The Motivation to Work, Frederick
Herzberg argued that such conditions - or 'hygiene factors' -
do not in fact motivate workers.
They are merely 'satisfiers' - o, more importantly, 'dissatisfiers' where they do exist.
Workers who have them take them for granted. As Herzberg put it,
'A reward once given becomes a right.' 'Motivators', on the contrary
on the contrary, include things such as having a challenging and
interesting job, recognition and responsibility, promotion, and so on.
Unless people
are motivated,
and want to do
a good job,
they will not perform well.
However, there are and always will be plenty of boring,
repetitive and mechanical jobs, and lots of unskilled
workers who have to do them. How can managers motivate
people in such jobs? One solution is to give them
some responsibilities, not as individuals but as part of a team.
For example, some supermarkets combine office staff,
the people who fill the shelves, and the people who work
on the checkout tills into a team and let them decide
what product lines to stock,
how to display them, and so on.
Other employers encourage job
rotation, as doing four different
repetitive jobs a day is better
than doing only one.
Many people now talk about the importance of a company's shared values
or corporate culture, with which all the staff can identify:
for example being the best hotel chain, or hamburger restaurant chain,
or airline, or making the best, safest, most user-friendly,
most ecological or most reliable products in a particular field.
Unfortunately, not all
the competing companies
in an industry
can seriously
claim to be the best.
