Since the early 1900s, theorists have been trying to describe what motivates employees. Despite what people have previously thought, there is no universal method that a company can implement. 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.    

There have been many motivational theorists who have attempted to describe how companies can motivate employees and in turn increase productivity. It began with Frederick Taylor’s theory that was published in the early 1900s. 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 were given very specific and simple instructions that they would repeat over and over again. The most notable results of this theory were the assembly line and the beginning of mass production. This theory, however, is not as effective in the present day work environment. 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 the decrease in performance is caused by workers having a narrower focus because of the direct incentive (Ariely). That narrow focus will then either lead to a decrease in the quality of the output or a decrease in the output itself. The ineffectiveness of this method comes down to the fact that a majority of the jobs in the United States today are not simple factory jobs that can be completed through repetitive tasks, they are complex jobs that require abstract thinking, not narrow thinking. Taylor’s theory can still be applied in part to employees 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 1950s. 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 successful idea. This method used by Disney seemed to work for them at the time. 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 would cause them to enjoy their work more and increase their motivation. 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 employees. The second was a greater involvement and interest from the managers in the lives of the employees. These first two 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. This was the case because the employees would enjoy interacting with their coworkers while in a productive environment. 

Mayo’s theory has had a big impact in shaping the way that management approaches their relationship with employees. Teachers and managers are putting much more of an emphasis on forming close relationships with students and employees. There is also more of a focus on teaching students how to work well in groups because group work is such a large part of many modern jobs. Even though 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 the social aspect of the workplace while completely leaving out other aspects such as pay and job duties. The theory could be improved if it addressed more of these factors.   

After Mayo, the next large development in the field of motivational theory was Frederick Herzberg. His theory, which was released in the late 20th century, 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. The motivational factors that Herzberg found effective 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. 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, and workplace conditions as hygiene factors. The most notable hygiene factor is pay which is classified as a motivator by many people today. Herzberg, however, found that adequate pay is a necessity in the workplace but it does not motivate employees to become more productive. 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. 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 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 to 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 that the thing they are working towards will be beneficial to people other 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 companies can control most easily 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 their work and if they believe that it is important. 

Some examples of 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 that lets employees spend twenty percent of their workday 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. It got to the point where only about ten percent of the employees at google were using it. Even some the employees who were using it used the extra time to complete arbitrary tasks like checking their email. (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.

While creating my own theory I looked at aspects of the previous four that are effective today and at aspects that aren’t. The main difference between my motivational theory and the other four is that I don’t try to find a few factors that will definitely motivate employees. I looked for factors that all employees need to be given before their employers should think about trying to motivate them. These can also be known as hygiene factors. After those are given, then the employers can branch off of that and find out what method would work best for their employees because no motivational technique will work for every employee.

After looking at the successes and shortcomings of each of the previous four motivational theories, I concluded that there were three factors that would best fit my theory. These three factors are adequate pay, job enlargement, and structured autonomy. Adequate pay would not be a universal amount that everyone needs to make, it would depend on what kind of job the employees had and what companies they worked for. For example, an employee at Google would require a higher salary to keep them from getting demotivated than someone at McDonald’s would. Adequate pay was added to the theory because two out of the four theories talked specifically about pay. Daniel Pink also talks about it in his 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. (Pink) I also looked at the research done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston as well as a study conducted by the London School of Economics that 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 more narrow focus. Despite the fact that pay has not been found to motivate employees, it is still at the core of keeping them motivated and that is why it 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 second factor, 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 in different theories. An example of job enlargement would be a financial planner and how they are always reacting to changes in the stock market. Job enlargement played a prominent role in two of the previous motivational theories. It was one of the main setbacks of Taylor’s theory as well as one of the main factors of Herzberg’s theory. While Herzberg has it as a motivator, I classified it as a hygiene factor because many new jobs today require employees to do something new every day. This means it’s not a factor that some employees can have and some can’t, it should be part of every employee’s day. 

 Autonomy is the third of the hygiene factors 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. As seen in Google’s twenty percent time however, this autonomy will not work without structure. This means that instead of telling employees to work on whatever they want, they should be given direction in the form of a project or an idea. Once they are given that direction, they should then be given the freedom to what they want with that project or idea. This is considered a hygiene factor instead of a motivator because, just like with job enlargement, a lot of today’s jobs require complex tasks which will require more thinking and if employees aren’t allowed to have autonomy for these tasks, it will make them demotivated. 

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. If each company incorporates adequate pay, job enlargement, and structured autonomy into their motivational methods, they will have a foundation that they can use to find which motivational methods work best for their company. 
