Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Nowadays many companies tend to struggle with the problems of high turnover rate and unproductive employees, which have great impact in raising the cost and lowering the profit for the firms. These problems have becoming a major problem for many firms worldwide. As per solution, firms have to focus more on how to motivate their people in order to exploit the most potential of their employee and gain most benefit for the organization.

According to the theory of motivation that can help explain how companies can motivate their people to achieve their goals, “Herzberg’s two-factor theory of Job satisfaction” and “Vroom‘s Expectancy theory” are those two theories that explain a correlation between the effect of motivational force on other factors.

Herzberg’s two-factor theory is the theory that has been derived from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into two separate factors, motivational factor which is a factor that lead to job satisfactions and hygiene factors, which in the other way around prevent job dissatisfaction.

Vroom’s Expectancy theory is focusing more on how to motivate people toward the organization goals via three key element factors, which are Expectancy, Instrumentality and Valence.

By comparing them together, Herzberg‘s theory is concentrating more on each individual basic factors that enable people to work happy and get motivated toward the goals but it does not concern on how each factors are related. For example, with the award recognition given, some employee may not feel satisfied. Since different employee may be more or less sensitive to each factor, depend on his or her experience. While Vroom‘s Expectancy theory is more stressing on how and way to motivation people factor via the equation “Motivation Force = Valence x Expectancy x Instrumentality”. As the equation linked each individual factor together, it can help companies to foresee the level of motivation value of their action for each individual.

Though these theories are sharing the common goal of getting the people to motivate, they are viewing them in different approach. Therefore combining these theories together, may mislead the concept of each theory and turn into impractical one since Herzberg’s theory is considering on each individual factor while Vroom’s theory is focusing on the combination of each factor that result in different motivational force for each people. However, both theories can be implementing together as the following diagram.

As shown in the diagram, Herzberg’s Motivational Hygiene Theory has been categorized from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into two factors that are more suitable for the business sense of understanding. Hygiene factors help company to prevent dissatisfaction, while motivational factors help improve satisfaction to the employee. In the other hand Vroom’s expectancy theory, which also derived from the same concept