DETRAN has been operating since 1967, with the mission of managing, supervising, controlling and executing services related to traffic, with the purpose of ensuring the safety of citizens. Thus, DETRAN has values that signal the performance of its staff of servers, it is understood: to optimize the service to safety, fluidity, and civility in traffic.

Job satisfaction can have consequences for both the individual and the organization, affecting behavioral aspects and the physical and mental health of the worker (Locke, 1976). In this context, the importance of conducting research on job satisfaction in organizations is highlighted.

From the practical perspective of Public Management, in some services provided by the Public Administration, in addition to good service, the public requires urgency in solving their problems.

Thus, the investigation of satisfaction will be essential to verify the consequences that the duties of the service and the environment of the organization have on the staff, since low levels of satisfaction and motivation can harm the health of employees and their performance in execution activities in the work environment. According to Locke (1984, apud Martinez; Paraguay, 2003), the dissatisfaction of workers can present low productivity and unsatisfactory quality of work, in addition to absenteeism, high turnover, etc.

For Chiavenato (2010), Quality of Life at Work has a strong influence on the constellation of factors, such as: satisfaction with the fulfillment of assignments, possibilities for the future in the organization, recognition for the results achieved, salary, benefits, human relationship in the context of organizations, psychological and physical environment at work, responsibility to act and make decisions and the possibility of being engaged and having an active participation in the organization.

In this context, Quality of Life are all elements that provide balance and well-being to the human being, be it in physical, mental and emotional aspects. For the author, it is necessary to analyze all aspects that influence worker satisfaction.

Quality of life is linked to motivation, as it is responsible for affecting the personal and behavioral attitudes of workers, relevant to individual or group productivity, such as: motivation for work, adaptability to changes in the work environment, creativity and willingness to innovate or accept changes and, mainly, add value to the organization. (Chiavenato, 2010).

According to Andrade (2020), the quality of life at work consists of producing with quality, with the prevalence of positive emotions and moods, with the work carried out outside the organization’s physical facilities, with the use of communication and information technologies, enabling satisfaction, personal and professional fulfillment. The study of well-being at work, therefore, must include positive affective and cognitive experiences. On the other hand, well-being at work is greater when positive affect prevails over negative affect at work and there are experiences of developing individual potentials and personal fulfillment (Demo and Paschoal, 2016; Paschoal and Tamayo, 2008; Paschoal et al., 2022).

Job satisfaction has been a widely studied topic in the area of people management, and a conceptualization of the subject is important. The definition we will use concerns how much people like or dislike their work. Researchers have analyzed the relationship of several variables with satisfaction, which allows organizations to identify areas where there is dissatisfaction and to implement appropriate improvements (Spector, 1997). Ybema, Smulders and Bongers (2010), in their research, verified the relationship between satisfaction and absenteeism in companies in the Netherlands. Traldi and Demo (2012) demonstrated the influence of affective organizational commitment on job satisfaction and well-being, in Brazilian research with professors from a federal university (Ventorini; Ornelas Paes and Marchiori, 2019).

Faragher, Cass and Cooper (2005) addressed in their research, the relationship between job satisfaction and physical and mental health. Through systematic literature review and meta-analysis of 485 studies, they found an indication of a highly significant relationship between these variables, being even stronger in the case of mental health (bournout, low self-esteem, anxiety and depression). Based on these results, the researchers recommended that organizations identify the aspects of work that are causing dissatisfaction (Ventorini; Ornelas Paes and Marchiori, 2019).

Thus, promoting job satisfaction is a responsibility of the leader, aiming to bring benefits to the organization and to society, by promoting occupational safety and health. (Hantula, 2015). Such considerations point to the relevance of investigating the factors that influence job satisfaction and motivation.

Satisfaction in the work environment encompasses more than the general attitudes of employees, as the development of duties goes beyond simple activities in the organization. It is necessary not only to live with colleagues and the leadership, but also to follow the organization’s rules and policies, achieve significant performances, accept low working conditions and situations related to gender (Robbins, 2006).

According to Rego (2001), satisfaction is linked to the treatment of justice and respect to which the worker is subjected. “It is worth mentioning that the expression” job satisfaction “represents the totalization of when the individual who works has pleasurable experiences in the context of organizations” (Siqueira, 2008, p. 261).

The investigation of job satisfaction to promote workers’ quality of life policies is important to understand that, “measuring worker satisfaction levels could be a strategy to monitor how much companies are able, or not, to promote the health and well-being of employees inside and outside the company”. (Siqueira, 2008, p. 266).

The concept of motivation corresponds to the effort undertaken by the individual in a given direction, and involves both the quality of that effort and the direction of the behavior (Perry and Porter, 1982).

Amabile (1993), brings the definition of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; the first is related to the search, at work, for pleasure, interest, curiosity, self-expression and personal challenge, while the second refers to the engagement at work to achieve some goal that is not directly related to work, such as rewards, feedback and deadlines. Therefore, in order to make this distinction, the way the person perceives the tasks he performs is analyzed. According to the author, job satisfaction depends on the availability of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators present in the work environment and how much they match with the motivational orientation of each individual.

According to Brunelli (2008), organizations are constantly changing. Motivation is an integral part of the process of efficiently managing companies, research originating from motivation has highlighted the relevance of distinguishing human motivation as a fundamental and indispensable condition to achieve the goals expected by organizations (Costa and Teixeira, 2018).

Thus, human motivation is one of the main themes of the Behavioral Theory of Administration, where the administrator needs to know human needs to better understand human behavior and use human motivation as a powerful means to improve the quality of life within organizations (Chiavenato, 2011; Costa and Teixeira, 2018).

With the evolution of labor relations and the changes in the relationship between companies, motivational theories become the object of studies in the organizational area (public or private), gaining greater strength and plurality of concepts (De Campos Avaristo; Souza, 2018). Satisfaction involves the emotions and attitudes of employees in relation to the goals and performance of organizations, Pedraza (2020). For Lopes et al. (2015) intrinsic and extrinsic motivation has been constantly studied and the development of organizational practices is important. Factors such as remuneration, benefits, stability and promotion fall under extrinsic motivation, whereas intrinsic motivation encompasses factors such as personal fulfillment, the search for new challenges, recognition, autonomy, among others. What organizations, whether public or private, can do is create favorable situations and environments, so that each worker can be motivated (Ferreira, 2021; Silva et al., 2020).

Below are the Main Theories of Human Needs by Frederick Herzberg, McClelland and Maslow that explain the individual’s motivation process. Based on Herzberg’s theory, there are two factors that contribute to employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Table 1 presents the motivational factors, which refer to the activities inherent to the worker’s position. Table 2, on the other hand, is the hygienic factors, which are related to the work environment.

For Herzberg, the factors that generate motivation tend to increase productivity and the results of workers, since the hygienic factors act in order to avoid negative situations, that is, they need to be well managed in order not to drop productivity. However, increasing them beyond a certain limit would not influence motivation.

McClelland argues for the existence of three fundamental sources for human motivation. Being them:

Figure 1Maslow understands that people are motivated by the desire to achieve or maintain the various satisfactions from basic conditions to the highest desires.

Below the meanings that correspond to each level according to Maximiano (2000):

According to Maslow, no need is fully satisfied, but a need can no longer have an overbearing action, when there is a greater degree of satisfaction. However, the motivation of individuals is stimulated by the level that is not yet satisfied, that is, individuals are motivated to satisfy the needs that are unfulfilled.

The Traffic Department of the Federal District was created on March 13, 1967, it is an autarchy linked to the Secretariat of Public Security, with its own legal personality and administrative and financial autonomy, it is an agency whose function is to manage and supervise vehicle traffic as well as the training of its drivers. The public agency develops these activities with a focus on order on public roads, while ensuring the safety of car drivers and pedestrians. Traffic inspection is constant so that all the rules established by law are complied with, the offending driver is punished through fines, vehicle seizure, seizure of his National Driver’s License, among others. Headquarters and venue in Brasilia and jurisdiction throughout the Federal District, according to Decree-Law No. 315 of March 13, 1967. This organization was chosen because of the possibility of accessing data for the development of the research and because it is one of the largest organizations in the Federal District that is developing a continuous work of improvement in the provision of services, and the investigation makes it possible to verify the factors that influence in employee satisfaction and motivation.

Figure 2 will show the organization chart of the researched unit. Substantially, the organization chart allows you to quickly see how the company is organized. In this context, there are seven directorates in administrative regions of the Federal District, which operate by means of management and nuclei.

This research has a quantitative approach and regarding the types of research it has a descriptive purpose and is based on a case study. As it aims to describe the characteristics of a certain population or group: its classification by age, sex, preference, level of education, etc. (Gil, 2007).

Therefore, in descriptive research, a detailed study is carried out, with data collection, analysis and interpretation of results, and there is no involvement or interaction of the researcher in the analysis of the subject.

A questionnaire was used for data collection in this research. The questionnaire was structured using the Microsoft Forms tool and sent to the functional e-mail of all servers. Regarding data tabulation, Excel was used in the online version (365), and at the end, the results were checked using the Bioest software developed by the Mamirauá Institute.

The target audience for this research is composed of all civil servants with an effective position in the Traffic Department of the Federal District (DETRAN-DF). In this case, of the 1,115 civil servants, 123 participated in the present study. That is, about 11 per cent. However, we consider that this percentage, due to randomness, meets the conditions of an important representativeness.

The instrument used to collect the data to check the degree of satisfaction of the employees, was used the Reduced Work Satisfaction Scale (EST), which was developed in Brazil, validated by Siqueira (2008). The version used will be the reduced version, which contains 15 items to be answered on a 5-point Likert scale, which vary on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “Very Dissatisfied” and 5 meaning “Very Satisfied”, as shown in Table 3.

To investigate the motivation level of (DETRAN) servers, we utilize the Muti-Moti tetrafactorial scale developed by Ferreira et al. (2006). This scale has 28 items that will be answered by a Likert-type scale from 1 to 5, 1 being “totally disagree” and 5 corresponding to “totally agree”. Table 4 shows the items of the factors that evaluate each dimension of the Multi-Moti scale.

The civil servants who participated in the research occupy the positions of Assistant, Technician, Analyst, Transit Agent and Specialist in Public Policy Management and Government Management. Concerning the working time of the employees, in Figure 3, it was found that 94 per cent have been working for more than 3 years.

With regard to the sex of the servants, the survey showed that 58% of the participants are female, while 42 per cent are male, with a greater participation of women in the Traffic Department of the Federal district.

Regarding the age of the participants, it was noted that 69 per cent of respondents are aged 37 or over, 24 per cent aged between 31 to 36 years old, 4 per cent between 25 to 30 years old, 3 per cent between 19 to 24 years old and none participant with 18 or less.