When Max Hansen and I began analyzing data for this year’s ASQ Salary Survey, I expected we’d find straightforward answers about what makes quality professionals satisfied with their work. What we discovered instead was far more nuanced—and has profound implications for how any organization should think about culture, not just quality culture.
The central insight comes from distinguishing between two fundamentally different challenges: preventing dissatisfaction and creating satisfaction. These aren’t opposite ends of a single spectrum. They’re separate dimensions influenced by different factors and requiring different organizational approaches.
The Two-Factor Reality
Our research, conducted with over 1,200 quality professionals, examined 18 different cultural factors and how they related to job satisfaction. We analyzed which factors most strongly predicted high satisfaction when present, and which most strongly predicted dissatisfaction when absent.
What emerged was remarkably consistent with Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory from the 1960s, which proposed that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are influenced by separate sets of factors:
Motivational factors like achievement, recognition, and personal growth lead to satisfaction when present. These fulfill higher-order psychological needs—competence, autonomy, meaning, connection.
Hygiene factors like fair pay, adequate working conditions, and reasonable policies don’t necessarily create satisfaction, but their absence causes dissatisfaction. These address basic needs—safety, security, fairness.
The beauty of our data is that we could see this pattern empirically, not just theoretically. The factors appearing at the top of our satisfaction list (when present) were largely distinct from those appearing at the top of our dissatisfaction list (when absent).
The Lessons for Organizational Development
As someone who works in organizational development and culture design, I find three insights from this research particularly valuable:
1. You Can’t Skip the Foundation
The most dissatisfaction-inducing factor in our study was absence of “upward voice”—the ability to speak openly to superiors about problems without fear of negative consequences. This is essentially psychological safety, the foundation of healthy organizational culture.
Here’s what’s fascinating: upward voice ranks near the bottom as a satisfaction driver. Its presence doesn’t make people particularly happy. But its absence makes them profoundly unhappy.
This means you can’t skip building the foundation in hopes of getting to the sexy stuff—the engagement initiatives, the innovation programs, the culture transformation efforts. If people don’t feel psychologically safe, none of that other work will take root.
Think of it like Maslow’s hierarchy applied to organizations. You can’t address self-actualization needs when basic safety needs aren’t met. An organization where people are afraid to speak up can’t suddenly become highly engaged just by launching an engagement program.
2. Preventing Dissatisfaction Isn’t Enough
The flip side is equally important: just addressing hygiene factors won’t create a thriving culture. Organizations that focus exclusively on avoiding problems—ensuring people can speak up, providing adequate resources, maintaining fair policies—will prevent mass exodus but won’t create genuine fulfillment.
The factors that actually drive satisfaction are different: opportunities for pride in work, professional development, training, inclusion in idea generation, genuine engagement. These motivational factors address higher-order needs.
I see this mistake frequently in my consulting work. Organizations recognize they have a culture problem, so they focus on fixing what’s broken—clarifying policies, addressing obvious inequities, removing toxic individuals. This is necessary work, but it only gets you to neutral. It doesn’t create positive culture.
To build genuinely thriving culture, you must go beyond problem-prevention to intentionally create conditions for growth, meaning, and accomplishment.
3. Some Factors Bridge Both Worlds
One factor appeared prominently on both our lists: professional development. When organizations invest genuinely in developing their people, satisfaction soars. When they neglect development, dissatisfaction follows.
This dual nature suggests professional development sits at the intersection of hygiene and motivational factors. It’s both a basic expectation (especially in fields requiring continuous learning) and a powerful driver of engagement and growth.
From a culture design perspective, this makes professional development especially valuable. It’s one of the few interventions that both prevents problems and creates positive outcomes. Resources invested in genuine professional development pay dividends in multiple ways.
The Personal Context: High School Sandwiches
I shared in our Quality Progress article a story from my high school years working at a café. During a lunch rush, we ran out of sweet relish for chicken salad. My manager barked at me to just use the hot relish we had on hand.
I knew this was wrong—hot relish would ruin the chicken salad. But I was too afraid to push back, so I followed orders. Predictably, customers were upset, refunds were issued, and the manager blamed me for not following the recipe.
At the time, I just thought I had an unreasonable boss. But with decades of organizational development experience, I now see this as a textbook case of failed upward voice. The culture my manager created—constantly pointing out mistakes, responding aggressively to problems—made speaking up feel unsafe.
This is exactly what our research identified: when people can’t safely raise quality concerns with their superiors, profound dissatisfaction results. My manager created conditions that ensured quality failures while simultaneously destroying any possibility of job satisfaction for her team.
The lesson extends far beyond sandwiches or quality work. Any organization where people are afraid to speak up about problems is systematically sabotaging its own effectiveness while creating miserable conditions for employees.
Implications for Culture Work
These findings shape how I approach culture design and organizational development work:
Start with safety. Before doing anything else, assess psychological safety. Can people speak openly about problems? Will raising concerns lead to punishment or appreciation? If safety isn’t established, other culture work is premature.
- Distinguish hygiene from motivational factors. When organizations say they want to improve culture, clarify whether they’re trying to prevent dissatisfaction or create satisfaction. These require different interventions. Often they need both, but in sequence: foundation first, then building up.
Look for bridging factors. Factors that both prevent dissatisfaction and create satisfaction (like professional development) offer particularly high return on investment. Prioritize these where resources are limited.
- Make it systemic. Individual initiatives—a new training program here, a recognition system there—rarely transform culture. Culture emerges from systems: how decisions get made, how resources get allocated, what behaviors get rewarded, what information flows where. Culture work must address these systems, not just implement programs.
Measure both dimensions. Don’t just ask “are people satisfied?” Ask separately about potential sources of dissatisfaction (can people speak up? do they have adequate resources? are policies fair?) and sources of satisfaction (do people feel engaged? can they take pride in their work? are they developing?). These aren’t opposites—they’re separate dimensions.
The Quality Professional Context
While our research focused specifically on quality professionals, the patterns we found likely apply more broadly. Quality professionals may be especially sensitive to some factors (like enterprise-wide commitment to quality), but the distinction between hygiene and motivational factors appears universal.
What makes quality professionals interesting as a study population is that they’re often the organizational conscience—the people who see systemic problems, who understand the gap between current and possible performance, who advocate for doing things right rather than doing things fast.
When quality professionals are dissatisfied, it’s often because organizational culture prevents them from doing what they know needs to be done. They can see what’s wrong but lack the tools, resources, authority, or psychological safety to fix it. This creates a particularly acute form of dissatisfaction.
Organizations serious about quality—and really, every organization should be—need to pay attention to this. If your quality professionals are dissatisfied, it’s probably a symptom of deeper culture problems that affect everyone, not just the quality function.
Moving Forward
The research Max and I conducted offers a roadmap for culture development:
- Establish foundations (hygiene factors): psychological safety, adequate resources, fair policies, enterprise-wide commitment to core values
- Build capability (bridging factors): professional development, comprehensive training
- Create conditions for thriving (motivational factors): opportunities for pride, genuine engagement, inclusion in improvement, meaningful work
Each stage requires different interventions and different timescales. You can fix some hygiene factors relatively quickly—clarify a policy, remove an obstacle, establish a new norm around speaking up. Motivational factors take longer to cultivate because they involve changing how work feels and what it means to people.
But the progression is clear: foundation first, then capability, then conditions for thriving. Skip steps at your peril.
The Broader Lesson
What started as research into quality culture has broader implications for how we think about employee satisfaction, engagement, and culture generally.
We often hear about engagement crises, satisfaction problems, or culture challenges as if they’re monolithic issues with singular solutions. The reality is more complex. Different organizations suffer different problems requiring different solutions.
Some organizations have satisfied but unengaged employees—they’ve addressed hygiene factors but haven’t created conditions for genuine motivation. Others have pockets of highly engaged people who are nevertheless deeply dissatisfied because basic needs aren’t met.
The path to healthy culture isn’t one-size-fits-all. It requires diagnosing which dimension you’re trying to affect—preventing dissatisfaction or creating satisfaction—and then implementing appropriate interventions in appropriate sequence.
Our research provides one empirical foundation for that diagnostic work. I hope it helps other organizations think more clearly about culture and what it really takes to create environments where people can do their best work.
