‘Happiness is having one’s passion for one’s profession,’ wrote the French novelist Stendhal.
The number of people in this fortunate position is limited, but there are all sorts of aspects of office and factory work that can make it enjoyable. Relations with colleagues can be satisfying and congenial. People may find great pleasure in working in a team, for example. Conversely, bad relations with colleagues can be extremely unpleasant, and lead to great dissatisfaction and
distress.
Basic work on what motivates people in organisations was done by Frederick Herzberg in the 1960s. He found that things such as salary and working conditions were not in themselves enough to make employees satisfied with their work, but that they can cause dissatisfaction if they are not good enough. He called these things hygiene factors. Here is a complete list:
• Supervision
• Company policy
• Working conditions
• Salary
• Peer relationships
• Security
Some things can give positive satisfaction. These are the motivator factors:
• Achievement
• Recognition
• The work itself
• Responsibility
• Advancement
• Growth
Another classic writer in this area is Douglas McGregor, who talked about Theory X, the idea, still held by many managers, that people instinctively dislike work, and Theory Y, the more enlightened view that everybody has the potential for development and for taking responsibility.
More recently has come the notion of empowerment, the idea that decision-making should be decentralised to employees who are as close as possible to the issues to be resolved.
But where some employees may like being given responsibility, for others it is a source of stress. People talk more about the need for work that gives them quality of life, the work-life balance and the avoidance of stress. Others argue that challenge involves a reasonable and inevitable degree of stress if employees are to have the feeling of achievement, a necessary outcome of work if it is to give satisfaction. They complain that a stress industry is emerging, with its stress counsellors and stress therapists, when levels of stress are in reality no higher today than they were before.
Read on
Richenda Gambles et al: The Myth of Work-Life Balance, Wiley Blackwell, 2006
Douglas McGregor: The Human Side of Enterprise – annotated edition, McGraw Hill, 2006
Stephen Palmer, Cary Cooper: Creating Success: How to Deal with Stress, Kogan Page, 2007
Neil Thompson: Power and Empowerment, Russell House, 2006
The number of people in this fortunate position is limited, but there are all sorts of aspects of office and factory work that can make it enjoyable. Relations with colleagues can be satisfying and congenial. People may find great pleasure in working in a team, for example. Conversely, bad relations with colleagues can be extremely unpleasant, and lead to great dissatisfaction and
distress.
Basic work on what motivates people in organisations was done by Frederick Herzberg in the 1960s. He found that things such as salary and working conditions were not in themselves enough to make employees satisfied with their work, but that they can cause dissatisfaction if they are not good enough. He called these things hygiene factors. Here is a complete list:
• Supervision
• Company policy
• Working conditions
• Salary
• Peer relationships
• Security
Some things can give positive satisfaction. These are the motivator factors:
• Achievement
• Recognition
• The work itself
• Responsibility
• Advancement
• Growth
Another classic writer in this area is Douglas McGregor, who talked about Theory X, the idea, still held by many managers, that people instinctively dislike work, and Theory Y, the more enlightened view that everybody has the potential for development and for taking responsibility.
More recently has come the notion of empowerment, the idea that decision-making should be decentralised to employees who are as close as possible to the issues to be resolved.
But where some employees may like being given responsibility, for others it is a source of stress. People talk more about the need for work that gives them quality of life, the work-life balance and the avoidance of stress. Others argue that challenge involves a reasonable and inevitable degree of stress if employees are to have the feeling of achievement, a necessary outcome of work if it is to give satisfaction. They complain that a stress industry is emerging, with its stress counsellors and stress therapists, when levels of stress are in reality no higher today than they were before.
Read on
Richenda Gambles et al: The Myth of Work-Life Balance, Wiley Blackwell, 2006
Douglas McGregor: The Human Side of Enterprise – annotated edition, McGraw Hill, 2006
Stephen Palmer, Cary Cooper: Creating Success: How to Deal with Stress, Kogan Page, 2007
Neil Thompson: Power and Empowerment, Russell House, 2006