Skip to content

ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: talent management

Kestrel Logistics pays its warehouse supervisors a salary well above the market rate, but supervisors still complain about poor working conditions, remote managers and unclear job security, and say these make them dissatisfied. According to Herzberg's two-factor theory, what does this situation imply?

Under Herzberg's theory, pay, working conditions, supervision and job security are hygiene factors. Improving them reduces dissatisfaction but does not create motivation. Kestrel needs to add motivators such as achievement, recognition and responsibility to the supervisors' jobs if it wants genuinely motivated staff.

  1. ARaising pay further will create lasting motivation, because pay is the main motivator
  2. BPay, conditions and security are hygiene factors that can remove dissatisfaction but will not by themselves motivate; motivators such as achievement and responsibility are neededCorrect
  3. CDissatisfaction and motivation lie on one continuum, so fixing conditions will automatically motivate
  4. DSupervisors are at the self-actualisation level, so only esteem needs are unmet

Explanation

Herzberg separates hygiene factors (pay, conditions, supervision, security) from motivators (achievement, recognition, responsibility, the work itself). Hygiene factors only prevent dissatisfaction. Option 0 and 2 reject the two-factor distinction, and option 3 mixes in Maslow's hierarchy.

Did you get it right without looking?

One question tells you little. A timed set on Enabling success: talent management shows your real accuracy, how long you take and where you lose marks.

Practise Enabling success: talent managementFree diagnostic mock

More Enabling success: talent management questions