Personal Development Project - Report #2 - Satisfiers and Dis-Satisfiers

Part of the Certified Public Manager program involves the completion of a personal development project.  My selected project is to prepare a series of lectures to my fellow managers about basic managerial concepts.  These series of posts are intended to document my progress in that endeavor.  This report pertains to a presentation made on 3/3/14.


Workplace Satisfiers and Dis-Satisfiers.

Continuing the series of management discussions at the weekly staff meeting, I presented a discussion of Frederick Herzberg's list of Satisfiers and Dis-Satisfiers.

These consist of the list of things that caused employees to be happy and satisfied at work:
1.  Achievement
2.  Recognition
3.  Work itself
4.  Responsibility
5.  Advancement

And the list of items that caused the most unhappiness in the workplace:
1.  Poor organizational policy and administration
2.  Technically incompetent supervisors
3.  Lack of recognition
4.  Salary perceived as unfair
5.  Poor interpersonal relations with supervisors

Things I noted about the research included:

• Adding more of the dis-satifiers did not make people happier.  It was more of a presence/absence issue.
• Salary and wages were only on the dis-satifier list.
• Recognition was noted on both lists.
• Dis-satisfiers tended to be related to how people were treated, while the satisfiers tended to be related to the work itself.

Although we did not have as thorough a discussion of the topic as the previous week, I was most encouraged that Dave Schmidt (the PW site superintendent) was interested in copying the lists I had written down after the meeting.