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Happiness is a Warm Paycheck
Since their pay is associated with time worked, hourly employees -- and even highly paid technical consultants -- are more likely to link workplace happiness with their pay checks, according to a new study. The same is true for attorneys, who bill by the hour. But placing an emphasis on pay to drive productivity is a mistake.
For hourly workers, time is money. Literally. Because their pay arrangement allows them to clearly see a link between work output and pay, hourly employees are more likely to associate income with workplace happiness, according to When Is Happiness About How Much You Earn? The Effect of Hourly Payment on the Money Happiness Connection. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford University (who wrote the report with Sanford E. DeVoe, a professor at the University of Toronto), says this doesn't necessarily mean that hourly workers are happier than salaried employees -- just that income is a bigger determiner of happiness for hourly employees. "People paid by the hour come to think of their time like money and become economic evaluators of their time," says Pfeffer. This correlation is not just true for low-paid hourly workers, according to the study. The same dynamic can be found in higher-paid professionals, such as technical contractors who are paid by the hour, or attorneys, who bill by the hour. "We argue that organizational arrangements that make the connection between time and money salient can be expected to cause people subject to those conditions to rely more heavily on income in assessing their subjective well-being," the authors write. Placing such an emphasis on pay to drive productivity is a mistake, says Ilene Gochman, senior consultant with Towers Watson & Co. in New York. "One of the things about money is that, when you get it, you want more. It's a never-ending cycle. You say you want it and it satisfies you but people get used to it pretty quickly," says Gochman. "I'm going to give you raise of 10 cents an hour. OK, fine, then you need 10 [cents] more and 10 [cents] more. You're always chasing after it. Its kind of a death spiral if that's all you're going to do." To emerge from that spiral, companies may want to focus on other drivers of happiness, such as a sense of purpose at work or a good office environment. "Pay turns out to be only part of a driver of what makes people satisfied," says Gochman. "If you have miserable working conditions and you don't like the organization and you're treated badly, all those things can definitely impact [enjoyment of a job]." In fact, a 2007 study of hourly and salaried workers, Job Satisfaction in the United States, by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, found that a sense of purpose and service trumps pay and prestige. Gochman says there are ways for HR to show that work is meaningful -- and to de-emphasize the idea of working primarily for pay -- such as using performance feedback and effective communication. If the company is in manufacturing, for example, leaders should show the workers the completed product and tell them how their contribution positively affects the business. "If they make a little piece that goes into a cell phone, then those workers, when they're out with families, can say, 'See that? I made a part of that,' " she says. "They're creating a real pride in what the company does and what your part of it is." Roxanne Emmerich, a Minneapolis-based author of Thank God It's Monday! How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love, and a management and workplace consultant who works to transform negative workplaces, says its all about making employees feel like they're making progress while at work. Companies can accomplish that by creating small, attainable goals, then celebrating when they're completed -- then making the next set of goals a little bit more challenging. "We're working with the basic element of psychology where humans need to win at the level they can win at. If you go really back to the basics, everyone can win at [that level], then they feel really good, they have confidence, they feel like they're making progress," says Emmerich. "Then you just start taking them to the next level of accountability and the next level of expectation but you don't just go from A to Z. You have to celebrate A to B, then B to C." As for money as a motivator, Emmerich doesn't mince words. "Take it out [of the formula] when it comes to motivation," she says.
March 10, 2010 Copyright 2010© LRP Publications |
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