What can happen when you don't have a handle on the hygiene factors of employee motivation.

Recently, I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine. Being in her late twenties and highly educated, multilingual and willing to give everything to her employer, she is working for a large service provider. The latter is a very reputable company and claims to be a ‘modern employer with very attractive working conditions and long-term prospects for high performers’.

So all the ingredients for a lasting love story between employer and employee should be there, right? Nevertheless, she has told me that she will quit before the end of the month, even though she has no new job offer. By the way, she is not alone - in December alone, three other colleagues of her made the same decision.

I have great respect for her professional qualities and think that her resignation will cause a significant loss to her employer - not to mention the difficulty, cost, and effort of finding a replacement for her.

I asked her for the top 5 reasons for her resignation. Here is her answer:

1. There are no clear rules for delegating tasks and authority, so she rarely knows if she is doing right or wrong - even if she is working hard to achieve the goals of her team.
2. Her manager usually claims credit when things go well and blames others when things go wrong.
3. IT systems across the department are unstable and the IT department at head office knows little about frontline needs and processes, which prevents the team from doing their job properly.
4. A manager who behaved inappropriately towards a young trainee was superficially blamed … and then promoted to a higher position.
5. She is aware of significant differences in pay within the team (although she cannot complain about her own salary).

Let’s analyse her reasons using Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory:

1 and 2 refer to a poor relationship with the manager, 3 is directly related to the work environment, while 4 and 5 show a lack of equity within the organisation. Herzberg would have said that all these elements can be found on the hygiene factor side. And we at AGILIS would add that they indicate clear flaws with regard to corporate culture.

So bear in mind: When we talk about employee motivation, we need to focus not only on ‘motivation’ but also ensure that hygiene factors - the factors that cause demotivation when they are not present - are addressed in a structural way.