We all want a job that pays well, right? How many of us think things like "if I could only make "X" amount more, I would be happy"? Tempting to think such things isn't it? These questions, of course, address the old debate of whether pay leads to satisfaction. We've all heard anecdotes about people who make lots of money and are miserable yet many of us can't help but think that more money would give us more job satisfactaion as well as improve our lives overall.
In the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Author T.A. Judge, et al, recently put this issue to the test to find out if employees find higher paying jobs more satisfying. While their results suggest that within organizations, higher pay is associated with higher job satisfaction, the relationship was not very strong. Not surprisingly, the results also suggest that pay level is more strongly related to employees' satisfaction with pay specifically than with the job overall. Moreover, the fairly weak relationships between pay level and satisfaction were consistent across several countries (U.S., Great Britain, India, Australia, Taiwan).
This study suggests that while increased pay is somewhat associated with increased satisfaction, it's not a strong enough correlation to say anything definitively. If employees truly want satisfying work, then searching for the best paying job is probably not the way to go.
The authors note that attractive characteristics of the leaders and the actual job are likely better predictors of job satisfaction than pay level. People tend to leave positions more because of issues with their direct boss rather than any other issue.
While these results also suggest that increasing pay alone is probably not the best way to improve employees' attitudes, they advise that pay does have motivational power. Being a pay leader in the industry is unlikely to boost organization-wide satisfaction, because employees tend to compare themselves to others, but it will attract highly qualified candidates who value their own skills and experience and look for a company that fairly compensates and values employees financially as well as otherwise.
Publication: Journal of Vocational Behavior (OCT 2010)
Article: The relationship between pay and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis of the literature
Authors: T.A. Judge, R.F. Piccolo, N.P. Podsakoff, J.C. Shaw, and B.L. Rich
Showing posts with label hotel jobs Alberta. Show all posts
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Thursday, March 17, 2011
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Do You Make Staff Sick?
Absences from the office are about a lot more than illness, experts say, and there's plenty a manager can do to reduce downtime caused by 'sickies'.
Believe it or not, organizational research suggests staff in many workplaces together develop something of an unwritten agreement regarding how many sick days are acceptable each year. And, in many of those organizations, staff will ensure they take their quota, having legitimized their absence thanks to the behaviour of their manager. It all comes back to the manager.
A researcher at the forefront of absenteeism at work is Professor Gary Johns, an internationally respected Professor of Management at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. Two of the biggest causes of absence, he says, are feelings of unfairness in how staff are treated and social causation, or the imitation of the behaviour of others.
"There is no normal amount of absence," Johns says. "There are major differences across companies, countries and professions. But research shows staff tend to peg absenteeism behaviour on that of others around them. So when people join organizations, their attendance behaviour fluctuates for the first few months, but over time it gravitates towards the norm that has been established within their unit."
What causes absenteeism?
As illness-related explanations are generally the only reasons accepted for unplanned absences from work, other reasons can go unnoticed or unmeasured, says Dr. Stefani Yorges, Graduate Co-Ordinator Psychology at Pennsylvania's West Chester University in the US.
"There can be sensitive issues that prevent people from going to work, such as difficulties with partners, problems with children, or drug dependency," Yorges says. "Other factors may include psychological difficulties or perceptions that their work life is unfair in terms of return for input.
"There are also individuals who need to exert some control over their work environment, and without this, take time off. Others may feel their efforts are not recognized and that 'no one cares anyway'."
Johns estimates that around 30-50 per cent of sick days in a typical organization are not due to illness. One of the strongest root causes of absenteeism is perceived unfairness in the workplace, which is absolutely under the control of individual managers.
"Employees are very sensitive to fairness and absenteeism is one of the few ways they can affect the personal balance sheet quickly. There's a point at which this behaviour can be seen as legitimate. Managers have to be supersensitive to fairness," Johns suggests.
Reducing absenteeism
People respond to how they're treated and the solution to absenteeism begins with leadership and management. Managers must get to know their staff personally, not to a stage where they're becoming intrusive on the staff member's life, but they should know which hockey team they follow and how many kids they have. Leadership should be visible and this starts with the development of visible relationships.
Employees need to know what their place is in the company and how what they do impacts on where the company is going. They need to feel part of the company and know their opinion is valued. If there are good relationships and clear expectations and staff feel managers care about them then staff won't want the company to suffer.
Targeting three specific areas will likely bring significant change in absenteeism levels.
Improve the skills of current supervisors; recognize and reward employee contributions; and increase employee involvement in decision-making processes.
It's vital for managers to convey the importance of good attendance to employees, as well. Too often the matter will only become an issue when somebody is found to be seriously exploiting the system, but this does nothing to change habits of the mass of staff taking their regular amount of days.
If a manager conveys expectations that staff will come to work each day, and is honestly concerned when there are problems with absence, then chances are that absenteeism rates will decrease.
[Source: article by Chris Sheedy from Management Today, September 2010]
Believe it or not, organizational research suggests staff in many workplaces together develop something of an unwritten agreement regarding how many sick days are acceptable each year. And, in many of those organizations, staff will ensure they take their quota, having legitimized their absence thanks to the behaviour of their manager. It all comes back to the manager.
A researcher at the forefront of absenteeism at work is Professor Gary Johns, an internationally respected Professor of Management at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. Two of the biggest causes of absence, he says, are feelings of unfairness in how staff are treated and social causation, or the imitation of the behaviour of others.
"There is no normal amount of absence," Johns says. "There are major differences across companies, countries and professions. But research shows staff tend to peg absenteeism behaviour on that of others around them. So when people join organizations, their attendance behaviour fluctuates for the first few months, but over time it gravitates towards the norm that has been established within their unit."
What causes absenteeism?
As illness-related explanations are generally the only reasons accepted for unplanned absences from work, other reasons can go unnoticed or unmeasured, says Dr. Stefani Yorges, Graduate Co-Ordinator Psychology at Pennsylvania's West Chester University in the US.
"There can be sensitive issues that prevent people from going to work, such as difficulties with partners, problems with children, or drug dependency," Yorges says. "Other factors may include psychological difficulties or perceptions that their work life is unfair in terms of return for input.
"There are also individuals who need to exert some control over their work environment, and without this, take time off. Others may feel their efforts are not recognized and that 'no one cares anyway'."
Johns estimates that around 30-50 per cent of sick days in a typical organization are not due to illness. One of the strongest root causes of absenteeism is perceived unfairness in the workplace, which is absolutely under the control of individual managers.
"Employees are very sensitive to fairness and absenteeism is one of the few ways they can affect the personal balance sheet quickly. There's a point at which this behaviour can be seen as legitimate. Managers have to be supersensitive to fairness," Johns suggests.
Reducing absenteeism
People respond to how they're treated and the solution to absenteeism begins with leadership and management. Managers must get to know their staff personally, not to a stage where they're becoming intrusive on the staff member's life, but they should know which hockey team they follow and how many kids they have. Leadership should be visible and this starts with the development of visible relationships.
Employees need to know what their place is in the company and how what they do impacts on where the company is going. They need to feel part of the company and know their opinion is valued. If there are good relationships and clear expectations and staff feel managers care about them then staff won't want the company to suffer.
Targeting three specific areas will likely bring significant change in absenteeism levels.
Improve the skills of current supervisors; recognize and reward employee contributions; and increase employee involvement in decision-making processes.
It's vital for managers to convey the importance of good attendance to employees, as well. Too often the matter will only become an issue when somebody is found to be seriously exploiting the system, but this does nothing to change habits of the mass of staff taking their regular amount of days.
If a manager conveys expectations that staff will come to work each day, and is honestly concerned when there are problems with absence, then chances are that absenteeism rates will decrease.
[Source: article by Chris Sheedy from Management Today, September 2010]
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