Analyse the role of hygiene factors in motivating employees.

Motivation is anything that affects behavior in pursuing a
certain outcome. Motivation is boosting the morale of the employees to increase their
level of performance and productivity. Motivating others is not an easy task because it
has to be done on a personal basis. However, it is an integral component that leads to
organizational success.

Motivation can broadly be divided
into two categories : intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic
motivation is that which an employee feels as a personal sense of fulfillment when he is
for example praised by the employer. Whereas, extrinsic motivation is that which an
employee gets due to pay raise or bonuses etc.

The theory
of hygiene factors in motivating employees was given by Frederick Herzberg when he
argues that intrinsic job factors motivate whereas extrinsic job factors only placate
employees. Employees are on a continum of satisfied to disstisfied from their
environment. Providing extrinsic factors will keep employees from being dissatisfied but
it will not motivate them. If an employee is dissatisfied with his salary, and he gets a
raise, he will no longer be dissatisfied but that doesnot mean that he would be
motivated to perform better. When they become accustomed to the new salary package they
might want more and more. They can easily be dissatisfied again. So herzberg says you
have to focus on the motivators - the hygiene factors and the job
itself.

Hygiene factors can also be called motivators and
they include seif esteem and self actualization needs-growth needs, the work itself,
recognition, achievement,increased responsibility, growth and advancement. These are the
hygiene factors that can actually motivate employees and lead to thier job enrichment.
This provides them with evolving work roles and challanging work environment that keeps
the employee motivated to work to his utmost potential.

The
hygiene theory has been criticised for lacking in reasearch support but the recent
studies are supporting that initially after the employee has been motivated through the
level of pay and other factors such as the basic physiological, safety and social needs;
existance and relatedness needs, benefits, job security, working conditions etc , they
can be motivated through making their jobs more challanging, their workplace more
interesting to achieve higher levels of performance.

Many
orgaizations have used the hygiene factors as motivators to excel such as IBM, Motorola,
Polaroid.