We all know Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory. There are motivation and hygiene factors that drive our job satisfaction. Here is my simple understanding of them:

• motivation factors drive us to work more, to perform better, to be more creative
• hygiene factors are the ones that their lack demotivates us and drive us to work less, to perform worse, and to be less productive and creative

David gives 7 very good examples why money is not a motivating factor but rather hygiene one. Pawel, on the other hand seems disappointed that in reality people are most interested by money and the other forms of motivation seem not being too effective.

Reading all this stuff you may think that these are objective factors and they are valid for all people. But it’s not true. People are different and they are interested in different things. And here came my enlightenment: There are two major kind of people based on what kind of factors are more important to them. I would call them active and passive people. There are people who consider the hygiene factors as more important (passive) and there are people who are interested in motivation factors (active).

And there are also two major types of work:

• interesting, dynamic, creative, and varied, and
• routine, monotonous, and boring

There is a need of both kind of people to match the corresponding type of work and respectively, you have to motivate them differently. The active people better fit the dynamic type of work – designers, architects, project managers. They are ambitious and creative type of persons and they can be motivated using a variety of motivation factors. All of them will work.

On the other hand, for more monotonous type of work you need the passive kind of people. Even in the field of software development there are many tasks that require persistence and patience and the active people are not the right choice because they get bored very soon. You need passive people but you cannot motivate them because they are not ambitious – they are not looking for improvement – they just want to do their job peacefully and quietly. For them the hygiene factors are determining so you need to secure them.

If you mix the factors and use the opposite approach you will get nothing. If you secure the hygiene factors for the active and ambitious people they won’t be satisfied because they will always be looking for some improvement and growth that you don’t provide. And if you try to motivate with achievement, recognition and personal growth people who just want to receive their salary regularly and to have an always-working vending machine for free, you again will get only their dissatisfaction.

Having all these considerations I think every manager should follow these simple rules:

1. Analyze the different jobs in your team or organization and define which of them require active people and which of them require passive people.
2. Hire people who match the job type – active people for a dynamic job and passive people for a routine job.
3. Use the appropriate motivation mechanisms according to the person’s type and the job type – hygiene for the passive people and motivation for the active people.

There are professions or countries where there are more people of the one kind and less of the other. For example, in Bulgaria passive people are much more than the active ones. I believe this is the reason for Pawel’s skepticism – both Bulgaria and Poland have been a long time on the same side of the Iron Curtain so probably this is why the most people he has met are passive ones and they are interested mostly in the salary as a hygiene factor.

Finding the right people for a job may be a problem and may take a long time but I think it’s better to work with fewer people before you find the right one instead of hiring the wrong person. If you put a person that doesn’t match the job you will never be able to motivate them.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• How would you reward your employees – cash or gift?
• How To Motivate Your Team?