(Inspired by “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Frederick Herzberg, HBR 2003)

At Aigence, we think about motivation a lot, not the surface kind of motivation that’s driven by pay or bonuses, but the type that makes people genuinely care about what they do. It’s one of the hardest things for founders to get right, especially when budgets are tight and everyone’s wearing multiple hats.

The truth is, no amount of free coffee or half-day Fridays will make people love their work if the work itself feels hollow and not meaningful. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

In this article we explore how teams can build lasting motivation into the work itself, inspired by one of the most timeless studies on the subject.

Why Money Isn’t the Real Motivator

Every founder faces this question sooner or later:
How do we keep people inspired when cash is tight?

In the early days of building a company, it’s easy to believe motivation comes from money, salary bumps, bonuses, equity and perks. And to some extent, it does. These things remove friction. They stop people from worrying about fairness or stability. But as management researcher Frederick Herzberg discovered decades ago, they don’t actually motivate. They simply prevent people from feeling dissatisfied.

In his 2003 Harvard Business Review classic, “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?”, Herzberg called these hygiene factors. Without them, people get frustrated. But even when they’re perfect, they don’t spark enthusiasm or creativity.

That comes from something else entirely. This comes from meaning, growth, and ownership.

What Herzberg Discovered

Herzberg’s research into job satisfaction revealed a truth that still holds up today: The things that make people happy at work aren’t the opposite of the things that make them unhappy.

Money, office space, policies, and perks can remove unhappiness, but they don’t create joy or pride. True motivation comes from what he called motivators, the work itself. Challenge, achievement, recognition, responsibility and advancement.

That’s the foundation of job enrichment: designing roles so people find value and progress in doing the work, not in escaping from it.

For founders and early-stage teams, this idea is perfect. You don’t need a huge budget to make people feel invested, you just need to design their roles like they matter. Because they do!

What It Means in a Startup

Startups live and breathe on motivation. You can’t out pay companies like Google, but you can provide more meaning in people’s roles. Every person in a small company wants to feel like they are involved in the product, the culture and the outcome.

Here’s how Herzberg’s framework translates into a modern startup environment:

1. Give autonomy early

Don’t wait until someone earns ownership, have it from the start. Let a developer own a feature end-to-end, a designer help shape the brand, a marketer experiment with full control of a campaign. Early autonomy builds confidence and trust, and trust becomes your culture. When someone can say, ‘I own that’ they work differently. They care differently.

2. Celebrate impact, not effort

It’s almost like we’re conditioned to applaud hours, late nights and hustle. But long hours aren’t always a sign of motivation, they’re often a signal of burnout or inefficiency. Instead, we should be shining a light on impact. Be able to show people what changed because of their work. Bring in real feedback from customers or internal teams. When people see a direct line between their actions and a real outcome, motivation becomes self-fuelling.

3. Create micro-steps for growth

Startups can’t always offer big promotions or fancy titles, but they can offer visible progression. Think of growth in small steps- opportunities to learn, to teach, to lead something.  A designer can run a sprint or one of the engineers can present their solution in a meeting. Publicly recognising the team, even if its small wins is imperative. With every small step momentum is built.

4. Build recognition into the rhythm

Building a culture of appreciation and recognition shouldn’t rely on surprise bonuses or one-off thank you’s from senior leadership. It should be present in every day. 

One team I worked with turned their Friday morning meeting into the heartbeat of the company. Every week, everyone had the opportunity to share a success either from their own work or someone else’s. It wasn’t always about big wins or milestones; it was about recognising small, everyday contributions. People started calling out the moments when a teammate jumped in to help, solved a problem, or made something smoother.

Over time, everyone began looking for wins during the week. They wanted to have something, or someone to celebrate. Recognition shifted from being top-down to peer-driven. Accountability spread sideways, not just upward.

5. Redefine leadership as design

Motivation isn’t a manager’s speech or what’s written in a culture deck. Every process, tool, and meeting either enriches the work or flattens it. 

Leaders need to ask themselves - does this task teach something new? Does it let someone make a decision and take ownership? Does it show visible progress? If not, then redesign it. People don’t resign from companies when they feel they’re learning and trusted.

The Startup Advantage

Ironically, big companies often have to spend lots of money to retrofit motivation, bringing in consultants, redesigning roles, re-teaching managers to care about their people. Startups have the advantage that they can build it from day one.

Culture isn’t written in a slide deck; it’s how the team feels to deliver their work every day. Motivation isn’t something you add later; it’s something you bake into how people spend their time.

When teams have meaning, growth, and ownership, they don’t need to be bribed to care by being paid a bonus. They already do.

Takeaway

Motivation doesn’t come from perks, ping-pong tables, or pay rises. It comes from the structure of the work itself, how much it lets people learn, create, and be recognised and feel part of a mission.

As Herzberg wrote, “If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.”

So perhaps have a look at each role in your team. Is there meaning? Is there growth? Is there ownership?

That’s where the motivation lives and where your best people will want to stay.

Aigence

At Aigence, we believe people do their best work when they have ownership, trust, and room to grow. Motivation isn’t about managing harder, it’s about designing roles that matter. That starts with clarity. Defining what success looks like, giving people real responsibility, and letting them shape their path. Building thoughtful job descriptions and storing them in Aigence so everyone can access, evolve, and align around them, is one simple step toward a culture where motivation is built in, not bolted on.

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