Since the early 1900’s, theorists have been trying to describe what motivates employees of a company. Despite what people have previously thought, there is no universal method that a company can implement to motivate its employees. Employee wants and needs are always changing and it’s not possible to create a set of rules that all companies should adhere to. Instead it is something that should be looked at on a case by case basis. There are however, a few general concepts that can then be found at the basis of some of the previous motivational methods. Those concepts can lay the groundwork that each company can build off of.    

Throughout recent history there have been motivational theorists who have attempted to describe how companies can motivate employees and in turn increase productivity. There have been many motivational theories over the years. It began with Frederick Taylor’s theory that was published in the earlier 1900’s. His theory said that people are primarily motivated by money. In this theory, he introduced the concept of the piece rate pay system, this system was essentially a direct reward system because the workers received more rewards if they increased their production. The assumption that Taylor made in order to create his theory was that employees do not naturally enjoy their work so giving them a reward for increased output would improve production. Taylor’s theory created an autocratic work environment where employees would be watched closely by their managers and they were given very specific and simple instructions that they would repeat over and over again. The most notable result of this theory was the assembly line and the beginning of mass production. The backlash against this theory came due to the fact that workers would get bored of doing the same thing hundreds of times every day and that eventually lead to strikes. The major downfall of this theory today is that most jobs in the United States are not simple factory jobs that can be completed through repetitive tasks, they are complex jobs that require abstract thinking. The output for these types of jobs is not increased when workers are given a reward for increased production. The opposite actually occurs, in a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that looked at the impact of direct incentives on employees, they found that once the task at hand requires “even rudimentary cognitive skills” an increased reward leads to a decreased performance. That same study also found that decrease in performance is caused by workers having a narrower focus because of the direct incentive (Ariely). That narrow focus will then either leads a decrease in the quality of the output or a decrease in the output itself. This theory does still have some use in today’s workplace. It can still be applied in part to workers who are given simple and specific tasks such as factory workers because at the time the theory was published they dominated the American workplace. A modified version of this method was even used by Disney as recently as in the 1950’s when Walt Disney surprised his higher level employees on Christmas with large bonuses of cash, stock, and even cars when they would come up with a hugely successful idea. This method used by Disney seemed to work for them at the time as shown by the fact that in certain situations workers would return to work on Christmas Day after receiving their bonuses. (Bradt) It cannot be the only method an employer uses even in that kind environment because it only considers reward as a motivator and cannot change whether or not an employee enjoys their work. Today, however, the mystery of motivation doesn’t surround low skilled workers, it surrounds high skilled workers who need to think abstractly.

After Taylor’s theory was found to be incomplete, Elton Mayo came up with his own theory towards the middle of the 20th century. His theory ignored the reward side of motivation and instead looked at social needs of workers. Mayo created the idea that employees enjoyed interacting with each other and that having the opportunity to interact with each other would cause them to enjoy their work more and that would increase their motivation at work. After conducting a series of experiments on this idea, he concluded that there were three major ways that employees could have their social needs met at work. The first of these three ways was an increased communication between management and the employees. The second was a greater involvement and interest from the managers in the lives of the employees. This would lead to the employees feeling more valued as a human instead of just as a worker. The final one he found was that if employees were given the opportunity to work in teams, then they would work better and they would become more motivated. Mayo’s theory has had a big impact in shaping the way that management approaches their relationship with their employees. Despite the fact that this theory has had such a large impact, it still has its shortcomings. Mayo’s theory creates a more laid back workplace than Taylor’s does, which can be a good thing but without the right structure could lead to employees not working as hard and potentially not completing their work soon enough. This theory has a better fit in today’s workplace, however, it only addresses one specific aspect of the workplace and it could be improved if it addressed more of them.   

After Mayo, the next large development in the field of motivational theory was Frederick Herzberg. His theory was released in the late 20th century, it looked at not only what motivated employees but what caused employees to become demotivated. He classified these ideas into two groups, motivational factors and hygiene factors. Hygiene factors would not motivate employees but instead they were things that employees needed in the workplace in order to keep from becoming demotivated. He classified pay, supervision, workplace conditions, and policies as hygiene factors. The most notable hygiene factor is pay which is something that people even today would classify as a motivator. Herzberg, however, found that adequate pay is a necessity in the workplace but it does not motivate employees to become more productive. The factors that Herzberg says motivate employees are job enlargement, job enrichment, and job empowerment. Job enlargement is essentially when an employee is given a greater variety of tasks to complete in their daily work. Herzberg found that when employees are given a greater variety of tasks it causes those workers to become more interested in their work. Job enrichment gives employees more complex and challenging tasks. The reasoning behind why this motivates employees is because they feel more accomplished when they complete their tasks. The last motivator, job empowerment, is when managers give more power to their employees over decisions relating to their work. Some examples of empowerment are letting employees choose how to complete the tasks given to them and asking an employee for input in the decision making process. This theory came closer than the others before it to describing what motivated employees at the time it was released. However, the workplace has been changing drastically since this theory was published. Most of these changes have come as a result of the development of technology. If we look at the three motivators from this theory in the context of the workplace today, it seems as if some of the things that motivated employees thirty years ago could be considered as hygiene factors today. Job enlargement is one of those factors that could be viewed as something that doesn’t actually motivate employees anymore but it is something that is given to employees to keep them from getting demotivated while at work. 

The most recent motivational theory to be published was Daniel Pink’s theory in 2009. His theory states that there are three main things that keep employees motivated while at work, those three things are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He defines autonomy as “the urge to direct our own lives” (Pink). When autonomy is placed in a business setting, it can be explained as having the ability to make decisions pertaining to the work you do without someone telling you exactly how and when do something. He defines mastery as “the desire to get better and better at something that matters” (Pink). In a business setting an example of mastery would be when an employee enjoys what they do and wants to keep getting better at because they think it is important. He defines purpose as the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves (Pink). An example of purpose would be when a worker really wants to work hard at something because they think it that the thing they are working towards will be beneficial to more people than just themselves. Daniel Pink’s motivational theory is tailored towards jobs that require employees to think more creatively as opposed to jobs where workers have specific steps to follow to achieve their final outcome. The main idea in his theory that the companies can control the easiest is the autonomy because the company can always decide whether or not they want their employees to have autonomy or not just based on the policies they put in place. Mastery and purpose, however, are usually going to depend on the person and whether that person enjoys whatever it is that their work entails and if they believe that it is important. These two factors could both also stem from autonomy. Some examples of what workplaces that involve the three factors of Daniel Pink’s theory are Google and Atlassian who are both famous for incorporating an idea called “Twenty percent time” (Pink). Twenty percent time is a system lets employees of a company spend twenty percent of their time at work to work on whatever they want as long it has nothing to do with their other projects. This system has led to some of Google’s largest creations such as Gmail and google maps. The system now, however, is essentially gone because even though it yielded some large creations for Google, in the end there weren’t enough people utilizing it. (D’Onfro) The problem with Google’s twenty percent time in the end came down to the fact that there wasn’t enough structure to the autonomy that employees were given and that caused some of the employees to use the time inefficiently. While autonomy, mastery, and purpose can lead to successful motivational methods within a company, they still do not guarantee anything. They do, however, give companies some basic guidelines to follow when creating their own methods.

Throughout the four major motivational theories, there are a few topics that can be agreed upon by multiple theorists, to find these mutual topics it is important to look at the basic ideas of the theory. One of these topics is the idea that pay, while not actually help motivate employees, is still at the root of motivation. In Daniel Pink’s TED Talk “The puzzle of motivation,” he says that “paying people adequately and fairly” in order to “get the issue of money off of the table” is necessary for the other three factors to be effective. He believes that it is important to get money off the table when people are incentivized by a direct reward, their results are actually worse the higher their incentive is. He based this off of research conducted by different institutions such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the London School of Economics. Both of those institutions conducted research studies on the effectiveness of performance related pay in companies. In the study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, they found that in almost each one of their experiments, “higher incentives led to worse performance” (Ariely). The study by the London School of Economics found extremely similar results, it found that “financial incentives… can have a negative impact on overall performance” (Gilbert). These two studies show that not only does a direct incentive not motivate employees to work harder but it actually decreases performance because it will lead to a narrower focus. Despite the fact that pay has not been found to motivate employees, it is still at the core of keeping them motivated because pay is still a hygiene factor. It is not just a normal hygiene factor, however, it needs to be at the root of all motivational theories  

The other factors that should essentially be considered hygiene factors and thus included in each attempted motivational method that a company creates are job enlargement, autonomy, as well as structure for the autonomy. Job enlargement is considered a hygiene factor because ever since employees started complaining about their assembly line style jobs, this idea has been floating around different in different theories. In today's world, however, it is necessary to keep employees from getting bored in their jobs and in turn having no motivation to complete those tasks. Autonomy should be considered in this group because in today's work people don’t want to follow a specific set of rules on how and when they should complete their work. Instead they want to do it on their own time and if they are forced to follow a specific set of rules then it will cause them to me less efficient with their work. Finally, structure isn’t as much something a hygiene factor itself but instead it should be applied to the other two in order to give employees something to be motivated about. This is evident in the example of Google’s twenty percent time when employees who had an idea that they were working were able to come up with some of Google’s greatest ever idea, but those who didn’t have any structure or focus to their twenty percent time were not able to use it effectively. Showing that autonomy itself can be effective in some cases, however, autonomy with structure to it will turn out to be much more effective.     

It is impossible for a theorist to nail down a motivational theory that will stand true over multiple generations. The work place is always changing and creating new ways for employees to complete their work. On top of that each company is different in how it operates and what the employees are tasked to do. The most important thing to look at is not necessarily what motivates the employees, however, it is more important to look at the basic needs that keep the employees from getting demotivated or hygiene factors. If each company incorporates adequate pay, job enlargement, and autonomy with some sort of structure into the motivational methods that they are making, they will find the methods that work best with their specific company. 
