On the application of the Two-Factor Theory to online employer reviews

Abstract

AbstractMonitoring hygiene and motivation factors from Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory is a popular way of understanding the influential aspects for employee satisfaction and motivation. The increased availability of employee feedback comprised in online employer reviews yields a promising data source to learn more about these influential factors and the theory itself. However, the application of the Two-Factor Theory to such reviews is yet missing. Thus, this article demonstrates how to apply this theory to more than 2 million online employer reviews. For that, review aspects as well as review ratings are leveraged to study factors that influence employee satisfaction with respect to the theory. Based on the gained insights, a prediction experiment is conducted to forecast employee satisfaction through the textual content of reviews. The presented approach identifies relevant aspects for satisfied and dissatisfied employees working in 43 different industries and 4 different countries. Overall, the results indicate that hygiene factors are most relevant for reviewers, while motivation factors are rather incidental. The prediction experiment achieves a mean balanced accuracy of 0.87, suggesting that review text is predictive for employee satisfaction. Further, the article adds useful input to the discussion of the Two-Factor Theory by providing comparative results across a plethora of different employers, industries and countries.