In the more and more competitive environment, managers are concerned with employees’ satisfaction, as a key factor for organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and development, and for the successful implementation of corporate strategy. In this paper, we analyzed the relation motivation-performance-satisfaction, and the importance that intrinsic and extrinsic rewards have for increasing employees’ satisfaction. The individual is satisfied if he is intrinsically and extrinsically rewarded. On the one hand, the employee perceives that own performance that results from the effort he expended, and that was enhanced by personal competence and commitment, is important, interesting, challenging, stretching. On the other hand, the employee feels that peers and superiors recognize (praise)and fairly reward (pay, promote) his contribution to organizational effectiveness, efficiency and development. Different studies showed that employees’ motivation to achieve good performance increases when they have a positive perception on managers, company, and coworkers. Statistics demonstrate that top 100 employers in Europe and The United States of America enjoy annual growth rates bigger than 20%, and receive each year six times more job applications than the number of employees. Most of the employees in these companies show commitment, reporting that they would stay with their organization for more than five years. Research performed in Romania by GFK, starting with 2005, confirm the results released by the international studies. Romanian employees appreciated respect, recognition, challenging work as more important than fair payment. Research showed that job satisfaction leads to defensive behavior, sabotage, absenteeism, turnover. Dissatisfied employees will not perform at peak level, even if they do not leave the organization, which has negative consequences on organizational performance. That is why we presented in the paper a program meant to maintain and increase employees’ satisfaction within organizations.

strategy, performance, motivation, satisfaction, reward