Why do people work for you?
A question was raised in a recent meeting about staff retention and happiness. We wanted to talk about how we make people happier, with a view to retaining them for longer. Putting any potential cynicism to one side ("do we only want to make them happier so we can exploit them more?", etc) it made me consider: why do people work for businesses?
Of course, the obvious answer is money. And for a lot of people that is a key motivator. I can't remember a single time, over the last couple of decades, when employees have said that they are being paid too much. Or, come to that, when a company has decided to give everyone 50% raises - rather than the usual, 'times are tight, we can probably just about squeeze 3%'. And yet, people still keep working. So why?
I know that for me, I tend to be motivated by a few key factors. I can roughly categorise these as: money, growth, and meaning. Let's examine these briefly before thinking about the interplay between them
Money
This is an obvious one, right? We all have bills to pay and things we'd like to buy, so it makes sense. In cross time zone teams this can get interesting - when people in Europe, for example, work with teams in the US we often see a reasonably large salary difference. This is especially true in the software engineering field, where I work. Regional cost of living accounts for this, of course, and people tend to work things like this out for themselves fairly quickly: "you have to pay for medical?" In my experience this often isn't a source of great contention - unlike feeling that you are being paid less than your regional peers. Judging this is tough though, particularly in an age of 'competitive salary' job adverts, which can lead to people believing they are underpaid, even if they aren't
Growth
Growth comes in many forms but let's focus on career opportunities and knowledge
Most people, at some point, want the opportunity to grow their careers. If I think about the software industry, junior developers hone their skills and want to move on to mid-level or senior roles. It is important to identify, encourage and support this. Most people are probably more technically capable than you (as a team leader or manager) they just lack experience. Spotting opportunities to give people this experience is key to supporting their career growth - allowing people to run smaller projects, encouraging them to take on more complex problems, and so on
Giving people these opportunities, and explaining why you are doing it, is critical to them growing their careers sustainably. There is very little point in throwing job titles or arbitrary promotions around, every few years, to stop people leaving. By the point they've started looking for roles it's probably too late. Besides, job titles are only really important when working with people who are used to heavily hierarchical businesses - where authority and influence come from what the company call you. For all other situations what matters is what you can do and that only comes through experience
Of course, the opportunity to learn things is only one part of acquiring knowledge. Another is access to quality learning materials and being given the time to learn them. In technology, the industry moves at breakneck pace and many people work long hours. The best software engineers are avid problem solvers who can't put an interesting problem down - however detrimental that may be to their home lives or mental health. There are many articles to be written on this topic but suffice to say - it's difficult to find time to live a life, keep up with the latest software trends, and hold down a job. It's therefore advantageous to businesses to make time in the working day for people to learn. From a raw commercial point of view: your people and the knowledge they hold are what make your business run. Why would you simply hope that they can make time for it?
From an individual's point of view, knowledge is critical to career growth and career growth is critical to keeping a roof over your head. If the business doesn't support your learning then it's easy to think that they not only don't care about the future of the business but they also don't care if you keep a roof over your head. My experience is that neither of these is true, but perception trumps reality every time
Meaning
People often want to know that the work they do is of some value - that the hours of their life they spend, every day, has some greater purpose outside of raw money. Of course often it doesn't but most of us would rather that it did. This could be as simple as making a cup of coffee that brightens up someone's morning, making changes to business policy that reduces environmental impact by 50%, or whatever. The key is that the effort that was put in had some value and meaning in the world - it wasn't just life thrown away. Not everyone can have global impact, of course, but helping people to see or understand the difference they make is critical - particularly when customers (be those businesses or individuals) become more demanding and, often, aggressive
Interplay
So maybe this was all obvious so far - most likely it was. The key is to think about the interplay between these themes. Working for a living is a trade-off - hours of my life for something in return. Purely working for money with no opportunity to learn leaves you feeling uncomfortable - you're deadlocked into a salary and lifestyle that you can't easily escape. Purely working for knowledge but not having a meaningful impact on the world can leave you feeling empty and valueless. Having enormous social impact but not being able to afford to eat will leave you in a position of having to find a job that you hate but pays better. This image roughly represents this thought
It's also difficult to determine what makes any given individual tick. I used to work with a brilliant technical architect. Well paid, great lifestyle, excellent at their job. one day they came to me and said that they'd decided to resign and work as a junior mobile apps developer, for a huge pay cut. At first, I couldn't understand it and was sad to be losing an excellent colleague and friend, but the explanation made sense: they wanted to work in disaster relief long term and in order to do so needed to get some more 'boots on the ground' experience in that particular field. It was a thoughtful move intended to lead to a more meaningful position later on. Thinking about our three criteria: they were more heavily focused on the meaning and growth aspects, allowing money to become secondary
To come back to a point I made earlier, I don't think I've ever been in a meeting about salary where people haven't said, 'we want more'. It would be foolish to say that money isn't a motivator. However, it is important to realise that there are other factors involved and that recognising and supporting these is key to having happier staff, better retention, and a stronger business
What next?
I don't have a comment section on my blog at the moment, but I'm always happy to chat on Mastadon- Next post: Adding topics to 11ty