According to Frederick Hertzberg, the sources of employee motivation and de-motivation come in

different forms. A low salary, an uncomfortable working space, stupid rules etc can cause
demotivation of an employee. But managing these environmental factors brilliantly will not keep the
employee happy. He will require interesting work, challenge and increasing responsibility in work
to be motivated.

How to get an employee to do something ?

Strategy 1: simply ask. If he does not listen, use an expensive communications expert to teach you
how to get through to the manager as an employee. Another method is the way of monetary
incentives, which is costly.

Strategy 2:

Physical KICK IN THE ASS: But this actually is inelegant, spoils your image and may prompt the
employee to kick you back. However, A Psychological KITA can be employed wherein the kick can be
administered without risk. If the employee complains, he or she can be accused of being paranoid.
These are NEGATIVE KITAs.

Strategy 3:

Positive KITA – The company promises rewards for every accomplishment. But is this true
motivation? No.

Myths about Motivation:

We must keep kicking our dog to move or recharging an employee’s battery to get him to move.
However, what if one has his own generator – i.e., they are motivated to move by themselves.

Some of the positive KITA practices are:

1.Reducing time spent at work- In today’s world, we have a 6 day weekend. Also, off-hour recreation
programmes have been created to encourage the people who work together to play together

2. Spiralling wages: When wage increases have not been doing the job, wages have been decreased
to motivate them to work for the next hike.

3. Fringe Benefits: Already high fringe benefits have to keep on being increased to ensure the
employees remain motivated. Since, this is a never ending process, a new KITA was created:

4. Human Relations Training: 30 years of human relations training has not worked to create an
atmosphere of motivation since managers were to true to themselves in terms of interpersonal
decency. Hence, a new KITA was created:

5. Sensitivity Training: The sensitivity training KITA failed. Since, the well-being, economic and
interpersonal KITAs failed, the managers came to a conclusion that the employees were not able to
understand what they were doing for them. Hence, a new KITA was created:

6. Communications: Employees were made to understand what the management was doing for
them. But this too, failed. Are the management hearing what the employees are saying ? Next came
the Two-way communication KITA

7. Two-way communication: Morale surveys, suggestion plans and group participation programmes
were conducted. Both the management and employees listened to each other. However, there was
no progress. The ‘higher-order-need psychologists’ came into the picture. They concluded that every
employee wants to actualize himself.

8. Job Satisfaction: The Big Picture approach emerged. An employee tightening 10000 bolts a day
was told that he was building a Chevrolet. Thus, he got a sense of satisfaction.

KITAs result in only short-term movement. The cost of these KITA programmes rises steadily and each
KITA reaches the point of saturation

Hygiene factors vs Motivation Factors

The factors that lead to job satisfaction are different from those that lead to job dissatisfaction.
Factors such as a sense of achievement at work, recognition from work done, the work itself,
responsibility, advancement and growth at work lead to job satisfaction and are called motivators.
However, lack of these factors does not lead to job dissatisfaction. It merely leads to lack of job
satisfaction.

Likewise, factors such as administrative policies, interpersonal relationships, working conditions,

salary, status and security are hygiene factors or dissatisfaction-avoidance factors.

Eternal Triangle