Foreword

Managaers and entrepreneurs!  We can create workspaces that can inspire productivity.  What motivates you to start your own business or succeed at work?  Let’s use this to be a strong piece of an organziation.

Please read the following excerpt and comment if you have a different order of importance for the 14 Herzberg factors.  Please consider whether you could use these factors to assist in making career or entrepreneurial choices, thank you.

What did Researcher Herzberg Figure Out?

Herzberg’s motivating factors highlights a strategy in managerial theory, where the focus is on what can be done with the workplace to motivate employees.  These factors can provide solutions for Managers to generate an environment that encourages genuine motivation out of employees, using the factors of the job they control.  They can also be used for an entrepreneur to find the business project for their efforts.  These Motivating factors were derived from the work of a psychologist named Frederick Herzberg.  After conducting a study to outline what creates enthusiasm for workers enough to work at their full potential, Herzberg’s factors (ranked from 1 most important to 14 least important) look something like the following.

The list includes…

1. Achievement
2. Recognition
3. Interest or Engagement
4. Growth Opportunities
5. Advancement
6. Responsibility
7. Relationships
8. Pay
9. Impartial Supervisors
10. Organization-wide Policies
11. Status
12. Security
13. Friendliness
14. Conditions

These factors and the interpretation of Herzberg’s study; result in the distinction of Motivating and Maintenance Factors.  Motivating factors are proportional to productivity and satisfaction, Maintenance Factors; have no effect on productivity.

In the Future we will interview Entrepreneurs and employees to rank or choose out of these factors were important for them.

Step 2 in Business Challenge

We made a Rank The Herzberg Factors PDF to rank the most important factors to you.  We did this because it helps entrepreneurs and workers decide what is important to them.  Take the quiz and answer the questions and be closer to your start up.

Motivation In The Workplace

Achievement – set up a  reward system around a work function, this can be small prizes of gift cards, cash or employee of month perks.  The work function can be number of items completed or sales figures, etc.

Recognition – This is important to keep some workers productive, as they work hard and feel cheated when not recognized for their abundant effort.  This can be soul crushing if recognition is not given in an environment with an employee with such a strong work ethic.

Interest or Engagement – Find a way to give effort into something at work that you are passionate in, such as writing for company news letter, or games that are safe to place and are relevant to business.  Such as guess sales figures, how many beans or screws in the jar, etc.

Growth Opportunities – these are more abundant in large organizations with many areas of operation, it is difficult for small businesses to make these available for employees.

Advancement –  set up a system for recognition or achievement.  Create Responsibilities that one can take one and be trusted with and an amount for a raise.

Responsibility –  Grow your business and do what you can to increase it’s sales.  A successful company allows you to be responsible in whatever way you wish.  Find a way to give back to community, employees, or disadvantaged group.

Relationships – Find a business with people you get along with, if you ever start your business invite your friends to take some part.  Find a business to network with individuals either in marketing or social media.

Pay – If pay is the most important thing, then you can either get a trade such as in legal or accounting; or you can start a high volume / margin business and aggressively lower costs.

Impartial Supervisors – This is hard to achieve; you either need to find a job with changing and multiple managers, or establish a level of managers that work together to run operations.

Organization-wide Policies – This is better achieved  at large organizations as they have many levels of managers and polices that provide safety and security in workplace.

Status – this is very specific only one way to get this, do the job you want to do.  Certain jobs have an esteem for influence (power able to change things or control),  skill(being able to achieve something that is difficult to), or interest(having an important role in the world surrounding a specific product or interest); in a way status is important no matter what, as everyone has a status they desire or are comfortable with.

Security – there are many ways to find security in a business or organization.  This could mean having a security professional at certain times and periods of operations.  Establishing security could also be achieved with policies that out in place procedures to protect workers from liabilities (health, legal, financial, beneficial, etc)

Friendliness – this is similar to relationships, except friendliness is more personable and needs less responsibility in job duties.

Conditions – this is more in your control when you own your own business.  Otherwise, you have to find an organization where you are comfortable with the conditions there.  This means great safety protocols when in high intensity labor environments, or fair policies in office environments.

Some ideas for our survey will include

1. Offering these motivating factors as cut outs asking recipients to arrange them by importance in a short time.

2. Asking why they chose this order.

3. Asking what they would change as they had time to think about it.