I completed my engineering degree a good 20 years ago. It was a shortage of skilled labour. Companies like Siemens invited entire classes to dinner and offered good starting salaries. But the absolute dream jobs for us were the Sauber racing team in Hinwil, or the Alinghi team. Although it was known that they pay massively lower wages.
We humans are cognitive misers. This means that we can only focus on a few topics at the same time.
You can imagine the themes as juggling balls. If you're good, you can do five.
Image source: Buckers Bern
We also look for such theme balls for our commitment in the world of work. There is a choice:
- Wages
- Cooperation, trust
- Appreciation, leadership
- Meaningfulness of the work
- Work-life balance
- Further development, career opportunities
and a few more. However, these are the most frequently mentioned. It's like eating: Some things taste very tempting, others perhaps less so. Some are very healthy, others less so. Unfortunately, these two categories do not always coincide. Wages are about as attractive and unhealthy as sugar.
But you can work on this and it is an important management task.
Management has a high influence on salary satisfaction
Firstly, it is important to sort the balls for yourself. Because effective leadership can only be authentic. A good start is to reflect on your own hierarchy of values. Or watch a documentary about Sauber, Alinghi, or whatever it is that gets you excited. Or to do voluntary work and experience first-hand what science says: that money reduces motivation in voluntary work.
Those who have sorted this out for themselves can support their employees to do the same. Anyone who has experienced first-hand how the joy of life increases when you bet on the right balls becomes a role model more easily.
When confronted with wage demands, three steps help:
- Objectivise: Of course, there are also situations where claims are justified. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. Salary comparisons within the company have a much greater influence on satisfaction than comparisons between companies. If two comparable engineers at Sauber earn unequally, they get angry too.
- Offer healthy "balls": Meaningfulness, further development and cooperation are among the healthiest balls. Work-life balance and career are ego balls, just as unhealthy as wages.
- Offer freedom of choice. Everyone decides for themselves which balls are important to them. People for whom wages are important have to be let go for three reasons:
- Wage increases due to pressure are practically never sustainable.
- They poison the working atmosphere, because the wage spiral and thus the unhealthy focus on wages sets in.
- Freedom of choice often changes the focus. Changing your diet is allowed...
A very good variant for 2 and 3 is this one:
You are a great employee. If you want more pay, I'll write you a top job reference. You'll find happiness in industries that pay more. If you enjoy working with inspiring people on international projects, you are and will remain welcome here. (Formerly. CTO of Phonak AG)
Sources (not yet verified):
- The relationship between pay and satisfaction depends heavily on social factors.
- For example, Kahnemann found that satisfaction is strongly linked to salary at very low incomes. For those who are poor, every extra franc is pure happiness. At high incomes, the correlation flattens out and even becomes negative.
- In studies on volunteers, Wehner has found that remuneration has a negative influence on their motivation.