Boosting Productivity: The Role of Hygienes and Motivators in Employee Performance

The tourism industry runs on people. From the front-office associate who greets guests at midnight to the housekeeping team that turns over rooms before the next check-in, every traveller’s experience is shaped by employees who choose, every single shift, how much energy and care to invest. So how do managers get the best out of their teams? Frederick Herzberg, an American psychologist working in the late 1950s, offered an answer that still guides hotel and travel managers today: stop assuming that one big lever – usually salary – controls motivation. Two different sets of factors are at play, and you need to address both.

The two-factor theory in plain language 🔗

Herzberg interviewed hundreds of professionals about what made them feel good at work and what made them feel terrible. The pattern that emerged surprised him. The things that caused dissatisfaction were not simply the opposite of the things that caused satisfaction – they were a completely different list. His framework separates workplace influences into two buckets: hygiene factors, which prevent dissatisfaction, and motivators, which actively push employees toward higher performance.

The key insight is counter-intuitive. Improving hygiene factors does not produce a happy, driven employee – it only takes someone from “dissatisfied” to “not dissatisfied.” To reach genuine engagement, managers must layer in motivators on top. As researchers studying the theory have noted, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not two ends of one ruler; they sit on parallel tracks, each driven by its own causes.

Why this matters for tourism 🔗

Tourism is a high-contact, emotionally demanding service industry. Guests notice the difference between a server who is merely present and one who is genuinely engaged. Empirical work on seasonal hospitality and tourism workers has found that Herzberg’s framework holds up well in this sector: hygiene factors set the floor for general workplace satisfaction, but it is the growth-related motivators that actually drive performance. For an industry where guest-perceived quality is tightly linked to employee behaviour, that distinction is everything.

Hygiene factors: the foundation that stops things from breaking 🔗

Hygiene factors are the extrinsic elements of a job – the conditions surrounding the work rather than the work itself. Herzberg’s original list includes company policies and administration, supervision quality, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, salary, job security and personal life balance. Think of these as the basic “hygiene” of an organization – like brushing teeth, they don’t make you healthier, but neglecting them creates problems.

How hygiene shows up in tourism workplaces 🔗

Fair wages and timely payment: Hospitality workers across the country have long flagged poor pay as a primary driver of dissatisfaction. Studies on tourism employment identify low pay, long hours, sexual harassment, discrimination and weak training systems as the persistent challenges that push employees out of the sector.

Safe and humane working conditions: The new labour codes coming into effect for the hotel and tourism sector are restructuring how wages, working hours, safety and social security are managed, with the Code on Wages requiring basic pay to constitute at least 50% of total remuneration. These are textbook hygiene factors – when they are absent, dissatisfaction is almost guaranteed.

Reasonable scheduling: Hotels and travel businesses operate around the clock. Without sensible rotation, predictable rest days and clear scheduling policies, fatigue and resentment build up rapidly.

Quality of supervision and peer relationships: Research on the Indian hotel industry consistently shows that turnover is triggered by dissatisfaction with relationships with supervisors, job content, working conditions, work timings and salary among other factors.

The trap of over-relying on hygiene 🔗

Many tourism employers fall into a predictable trap: when employees seem disengaged, they raise salaries, add a few perks, and expect motivation to follow. It rarely does. Herzberg’s research suggests that pay rises alone will not solve retention issues – salary is a hygiene factor that prevents dissatisfaction without intrinsically motivating, while true engagement comes from motivators like achievement, recognition and the work itself. A 10% pay hike may stop someone from leaving, but it will not turn an indifferent waiter into a guest-delighting one.

Motivators: the engines of high performance 🔗

Motivators are intrinsic to the work itself. They speak to the higher-order human need for growth, mastery and meaning. The classic motivator list includes achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement and the possibility for growth.

Recognition 🔗

Few things shape a tourism worker’s day like being noticed. A guest’s compliment passed on by the front-office manager, a “best housekeeping turnaround” award, or simply a sincere thank-you in a team huddle – these moments register far more deeply than another pay-slip. Recognition costs almost nothing and yet it is one of the most under-used tools in hospitality management.

Achievement 🔗

Tourism work offers natural achievement opportunities – successfully managing a 200-pax wedding, hitting an occupancy target, resolving a difficult guest complaint, training a new joiner. The job of a manager is to make these wins visible. Analysis of millions of online employer reviews applying the two-factor framework confirms that motivation factors, when present, drive both employee satisfaction and high productivity, while hygiene factors merely keep dissatisfaction at bay.

Responsibility and autonomy 🔗

An employee who is allowed to make small decisions – comping a coffee for an upset guest, choosing how to arrange a banquet table, deciding the cleaning sequence on her floor – feels trusted. Trust breeds ownership, and ownership breeds the kind of discretionary effort that hospitality businesses live or die by.

Advancement and growth 🔗

A study of retention practices in the Indian hotel industry found that career growth drives hotel workers regardless of demographics, and recommends connecting skills to jobs, offering rewards, and providing customised support to maximise retention. Clear career paths from steward to captain to F&B manager, or from front-office associate to duty manager, give employees a reason to invest themselves in the present role.

The work itself 🔗

Travel is, fundamentally, a work field full of inherently interesting moments – meeting people from different cultures, problem-solving on the fly, organising logistics that bring memories alive. Skilled managers reconnect employees to that meaning, especially when the daily grind threatens to flatten it.

The four combinations every manager should understand 🔗

Herzberg’s framework yields four practical scenarios:

High hygiene + high motivation is the ideal – employees are well taken care of and genuinely driven. High hygiene + low motivation produces compliant but uninspired employees who view the job purely as a paycheque. Low hygiene + high motivation describes the classic burned-out enthusiast – passionate about the work but increasingly bitter about poor pay or conditions. Low hygiene + low motivation is the worst case, marked by complaints and disengagement on every front.

Most struggling tourism teams sit in either the second or third quadrant. Diagnosing which one is the first step to fixing the problem.

Putting the theory to work in a tourism business 🔗

Audit hygiene first 🔗

Before launching a fancy recognition programme, walk through the basics. Are wages competitive in the local market? Is the staff cafeteria clean and the food edible? Are duty rosters published in advance? Do supervisors treat the team with dignity? Are grievances heard? Periodic employee surveys can help organisations assess satisfaction across both hygiene and motivator factors and identify exactly where attention is needed.

Layer in motivators systematically 🔗

Once the floor is solid, design motivators into daily operations:

Build structured recognition rituals – daily briefings that name a star performer, monthly “guest delight” awards, peer-to-peer appreciation systems. Create job-enrichment opportunities – cross-training across departments, project ownership, special-event leadership roles. Map clear advancement paths and communicate them; nothing demotivates a hard-working steward faster than the suspicion that the captain’s role will go to an outside hire.

Recognise that one size does not fit all 🔗

Research on seasonal tourism workers showed that migrant employees prioritise social interactions and meeting new people, while resident workers care more about wage levels – meaning the same motivational lever does not work for every subgroup. Tourism businesses with mixed teams of full-time, contract, seasonal and migrant employees need differentiated strategies.

Watch out for the salary illusion 🔗

Salary is a strange beast in Herzberg’s framework. Money sits primarily as a hygiene factor, but it can shift into the motivator zone when it is tied to performance – through bonuses, profit-sharing, or achievement-linked incentives. The lesson is not “pay doesn’t matter” but rather “pay structure matters more than pay level after a certain point.”

Why this approach pays off 🔗

Tourism is plagued by high attrition. Hospitality firms need to understand the factors behind employee turnover because service employees are indisputably necessary for operations to run successfully – and turnover is closely tied to both job satisfaction and the supervisory environment.

When managers address hygiene factors, they reduce the steady leakage of disgruntled exits. When they layer in motivators, they create a workforce that goes beyond compliance – staff who anticipate guest needs, take initiative during breakdowns, and convert one-time visitors into repeat patrons. Over time, this combination produces the operational consistency and service quality that distinguishes great hospitality brands from forgettable ones.

The bottom line 🔗

Herzberg’s two-factor theory is more than a textbook concept – it is a diagnostic tool. When productivity sags or turnover spikes, the right question is not “should we pay more?” but “are we missing hygiene, missing motivation, or both?” In tourism, where every interaction with a guest is a moment of truth, the businesses that consistently deliver are those that take care of the basics and then build a culture of recognition, growth and meaningful work on top of them.

What do you think? If you were managing a 100-room hotel where the front-office team is technically competent but emotionally disengaged, which hygiene factor and which motivator would you address first – and why? And in your own work experience, do you remember a moment when recognition mattered more than a raise?

References

1. https://www.simplypsychology.org/herzbergs-two-factor-theory.html
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14. https://planyway.com/blog/herzberg-two-factor-theory
15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325121955_Employee_Turnover_in_the_Hospitality_Industry_using_Herzbergas_Two-Factor_Motivation-Hygiene_Theory