---
title: Pay removes complaints. It doesn't create commitment.
description: "Herzberg: what causes complaints and what creates commitment are different sets. Pay is hygiene; enough of it buys no engagement. So raises don't retain."
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints-en.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

[Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en) [Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

[日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints)[English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints)[中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints)

[Organizations & Hiring](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/organizations-hiring)

# Pay removes complaints. It doesn't create commitment.

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

![Pay removescomplaints. It doesn'tcreate commitment.](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints-en.png?width=1200&height=630&name=herzberg-pay-removes-complaints-en.png)

**Series「People Don't Follow the Org Chart」** · Part 11 of 13 · Part 3 · Why people put in effort  
Prologue：[The people who aren't on the org chart](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/people-not-on-the-org-chart?hsLang=en)

An employee resigns. The company offers 30% more and he stays. Six months later he resigns again, and this time nothing holds him. The company concludes he always wanted to leave. Herzberg explained this in 1959: the raise removed his dissatisfaction and gave him no reason to stay.

## Two different sets

In 1959 the psychologist Frederick Herzberg interviewed two hundred engineers and accountants, asking when they had felt especially satisfied at work and when especially dissatisfied. He found that the answers to the two questions were not opposite ends of the same factors but two different sets altogether.

The dissatisfiers he called hygiene factors: company policy, supervision, pay, relationships, working conditions. When these fall short, people are dissatisfied; when they are adequate, people are not satisfied, merely no longer dissatisfied. The satisfiers he called motivators: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, growth. These are what produce engagement.

The controversy has to be stated. Herzberg's method has been criticized for sixty years: in interviews people tend to credit good experiences to themselves (achievement) and blame bad ones on the environment (pay, policy), which would manufacture two sets artificially. Later replications are mixed, and pay shows up among the motivators in some studies. I treat it as a useful empirical classification rather than a law: some things only stop losses, others generate returns, and most companies spend on the first while expecting the effect of the second.

Hygiene factors· Pay· Policy · supervision· Office · commute· RelationshipsShort → complaint; enough → no complaintMotivators· Achievement· Recognition· The work itself · responsibility· GrowthPresent → engaged; absent → not

**Fig.1**The two sets move on separate axes. Most retention budget goes to the left while expecting the effect of the right.

## Why raises don't retain

When the employee first resigned, the dissatisfaction was real: his pay was below market. The raise removed it. But why had he gone and checked the market? Because nothing in the work engaged him, so he started counting money. The raise fixed the number he arrived at. It didn't fix why he started counting.

This happens especially often in Japan entities, for two reasons. First, the only lever HQ can usually pull is money; achievement, recognition and responsibility have to be designed by the entity itself, and HQ doesn't trust the entity's design. Second, Japanese employees tolerate hygiene problems for a long time and say little, so the problem often becomes visible only at the moment of resignation, when the only thing a company can do instantly is raise pay. [A 50% raise and he still left](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/a-50-raise-and-he-still-left?hsLang=en) describes exactly this sequence.

## The design decision: hygiene to the line and stop; budget into motivators

Two steps.

Step one: bring hygiene factors to the line where they are no longer a problem, then stop. Pay around the market median, a clean office and an easy commute, clear rules that don't change weekly. Money above that line has very low marginal effect, because the dissatisfaction it would remove is already gone.

Step two: put the saved budget and attention into motivators, and put them into structure, not into verbal praise. Achievement needs visible output, which is the [responsibility module](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/ringelmann-effect-add-people-pull-less?hsLang=en): everyone owns a block of work with their name on it. Recognition needs a formal mechanism, not a remark when the boss is in a good mood: a public quarterly review, promotion criteria that state what was accomplished. Growth needs a ladder, as in [the previous post](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/motivation-is-a-design-decision?hsLang=en).

One addition for Japan: Japanese employees won't tell you where the hygiene line is. They tolerate dissatisfaction with commute, office and rules for a long time and settle the account all at once. So hygiene factors have to be checked proactively, not awaited as feedback.

## Back to the method

In my three-track pay design, the base pay set by grade is the hygiene factor: it keeps people from being dissatisfied about money. The results-based bonus track is, strictly, market pricing rather than a Herzberg motivator. The real motivators aren't in the pay system at all; they're in role design. That's why, when I assess a company's ability to retain people, I look at how roles are defined before I look at the pay table.

The last time your company tried to keep someone: was it removing a complaint, or giving them a reason to stay?

**In this series**  
Previous：[Motivation is a design decision](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/motivation-is-a-design-decision?hsLang=en)  
Next：[Score the role before you score the person](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/score-the-role-before-the-person?hsLang=en)

---

Shorter notes that don't make it into a full article go on LinkedIn. [Follow me there](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/).

## More in this column

- ### [Motivation is a design decision](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/motivation-is-a-design-decision?hsLang=en)
  
  Self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, relatedness. Each maps to a design decision: reporting lines, grade ...
- ### [Add people, and each one pulls less](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/ringelmann-effect-add-people-pull-less?hsLang=en)
  
  The Ringelmann effect: eight on a rope pull half of what they would alone. Coordination loss plus motivation loss. The ...
- ### [Your bilingual staff are not translators](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/bilingual-staff-are-not-translators?hsLang=en)
  
  Weak ties and structural holes: value sits in the gaps. Multilingual staff stand on the biggest hole, between HQ and ...

[← All articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)

## Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Get in touch](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

Nobu Sato

Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

[info@nobusato.jp](mailto:info@nobusato.jp) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/) [X](https://x.com/nobusato5888)

© 2026 Nobu Sato. All rights reserved.

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement" : [ {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en",
    "name" : "Home",
    "position" : 1
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog",
    "name" : "Articles",
    "position" : 2
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints",
    "name" : "Pay removes complaints. It doesn't create commitment.",
    "position" : 3
  } ]
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints",
  "@type" : "WebPage",
  "author" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/#person"
  },
  "inLanguage" : "en",
  "isPartOf" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog",
    "@type" : "Blog",
    "name" : "Articles"
  },
  "name" : "Pay removes complaints. It doesn't create commitment.",
  "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/#person",
  "@type" : "Person",
  "name" : "Nobu Sato",
  "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/", "https://x.com/nobusato5888" ],
  "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/profile"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Nobu Sato",
    "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/author/nobu-sato"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2026-10-24T02:21:20.406Z",
  "datePublished" : "2026-10-24T02:21:20.000Z",
  "headline" : "Pay removes complaints. It doesn't create commitment.",
  "image" : [ "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints-en.png" ],
  "mainEntityOfPage" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints",
    "@type" : "WebPage"
  },
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/nobusatojp-1.jpg"
    },
    "name" : "nobusato.jp"
  }
}
```