Office conditions leave room for improvement

This in from the L.A. Times: Filthy bathroom facilities and extreme office temperatures are most common gripes of unhappy workers:

"Forget salaries, expense accounts or keys to the executive washroom. Employee loyalty is won or lost over the cleanliness of the bathrooms and the amount of sticky goo on the carpet."

Citing a recently-conducted survey of 500 workers by Blumberg Capital Partners, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Molly Selvin reports that "More than three quarters of those polled said the overall condition of their offices affected how they viewed their employer and whether they were likely to stay in their jobs."

In a January 23, 2006 blog posting titled, How DO You Motivate Employees? I talked about Frederick Herzberg's notion of hygiene factors* - things related to the job context, or environment, that don't necessarily motivate people by their presence, but almost always demotivate by their absence. Some of the hygiene factors cited included:

• company policy and administration
• quality of supervision
• relationship with supervisor
• work conditions
• salary
• relationship with peers
• relationship with subordinates
• status
• security

Like chlorine in a swimming pool, the presence of hygiene factors don't necessarily make anyone feel more healthy (or even more motivated), but their absence will likely make people feel less healthy, and, as this article concludes, surely less motivated.

And now we can add the bathroom cleanliness to the list of literal - and figurative - workplace hygiene factors.

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*In contrast to hygiene factors, Herzberg identified what he called, true motivators - things that really do motivate employees - that are typically related to one's job content, like achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, opportunity for advancement, and growth.)