Work motivation and satisfaction

What Taylor got wrong, what Hawthorne proved – and why satisfaction in a company is not a soft topic, but a factor that shows up in absenteeism and staff turnover.

What is the relationship between performance and satisfaction?

A company’s success almost always depends on the motivation and willingness to perform of its employees, because they are the ones who deliver the result. The better the result, the more income is generated. So much for the simple calculation.

In the past, operational processes were therefore broken down into the smallest sub-processes, with the aim of increasing the productivity of human labour. Breaking them down into the same “one best way” every time ensured that recurring work could be done quickly and without much thought.

Taylorism and its calculation

This principle goes back to Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) and is named after him in the specialist literature. Behind it lies a clear view of human beings: the person is a factor of production that, like all others, is to be used as efficiently as possible. Their performance is to be kept permanently high through a suitable pay model – piece rates or performance-related pay.

The calculation does not work out. One-sided strain from the same externally determined movements, over and over, leaves the employee with minimal work content. The permanent psychological and physical strain leads to under-stimulation, and a frequent consequence of monotonous work is absenteeism. Because of these disadvantages, the principle is hardly applied any more in the modern world of work.

What Hawthorne proved

From around 1930, motivation-theory approaches emerged as a counter-movement, describing human beings as socially motivated group beings – the human relations movement. Its insight: the human being is not the “economic man” who wants only to maximise his income. People have further needs and expectations of their work if they are to work well over the long term.

This was demonstrated in the Hawthorne experiment: performance rose as soon as employees received attention – in this case through changes in the lighting at their workplace. To this day, the movement is accused of encouraging manipulative adaptation to existing conditions without improving the objective working conditions. The objection is justified – and does not change the finding.

The “human resources” model

The human resources model is shaped by five assumptions:

1. People take part in achieving goals that they consider meaningful.
2. They have more creativity, self-control and autonomy than their current work allows.
3. The core task of management is to unlock this previously untapped potential.
4. Management creates a working environment in which everyone can contribute their talents.
5. It continually expands competences and self-control and encourages participation.

This leads to a twofold expectation: the quality of work improves through greater influence and autonomy – and job satisfaction rises as a by-product of making better use of existing abilities.

Why satisfaction matters in business terms

Job satisfaction is of interest to a company not because it is pleasant, but because it has a measurable effect: it reduces absenteeism and staff turnover. That makes organisational action more predictable.

Companies thereby keep employees and their knowledge in the organisation for longer. Expensive replacement hires with all their familiar risks – distortions in the internal pay structure, onboarding effort, productivity dips during onboarding – become less frequent.

Q × A = E – what the theory means in practice

At General Electric I learned an equation that has been part of every one of my mandates ever since: Q × A = E. The effectiveness of a measure is the product of its quality and its acceptance among those who are supposed to carry it. A product, not a sum – if either of the two factors tends towards zero, the other no longer helps.

This is the business translation of what Hawthorne showed. And it explains why professionally flawless concepts peter out in organisations: their quality is high, their acceptance is zero, because nobody was asked.

In the post-merger integration of Santander Consumer Bank Austria, 35 branches and around 190 employees faced exactly this situation: a change of ownership changes the logo, not the behaviour. What worked was not a new incentive system, but a qualification programme that involved the people – in the final knowledge test, the average score was 84%. Not because the test was easy, but because those involved knew what they were learning for.

Conclusion

Satisfaction is not a goal that can be proclaimed, nor a by-product of fruit baskets. It arises where people have influence over their work and their abilities are needed. The question for every organisation is therefore not how to increase satisfaction, but how to design work situations so that it arises by itself.

Whether your organisation can carry change at all is shown by the Change readiness check. What you can hold me to in a mandate is set out under How I work.