Illustration by Peter Hoey
Given the nation’s grand—and justified—obsession with healthcare, you’d think employees would get more excited about benefits packages than anything else. Not true.
“In general, benefits don’t affect job satisfaction,” says Dave Munz, professor of psychology at Saint Louis University. “Not unless people have built up expectations for things and then they are taken away. That will create dissatisfaction. But when you add a benefit, people quickly adjust and build the expectation that that is what they deserve.”
On the other hand, Munz adds, “These are strange times. People are told we are going to have a new healthcare plan and it’s going to cost less, and then suddenly their company is charging more. They’re frustrated. So a benefit being taken away might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
If circumstances were normal, though, two sets of variables would determine how happy you are at work. The first set is all external: the nature of the work, how meaningful it is, salary, how much feedback the boss gives, the quality of relationships with colleagues, how fair the organization is, what its values are, etc.
The other set of variables is internal. Some people will find a way to be happy no matter what; others will be dissatisfied even if they’re paid to taste caviar on a yacht. “A cynic, a pessimist—that person will interpret anything in the environment negatively,” Munz says. “If he gets a raise, his response will be, ‘Well, it’s about time!’”
Bottom line: There’s no universal way to design a happy workplace, no ideal ratio of perks, bennies, and mission-statement rhetoric. “We’ve given up on that idea,” Munz says sadly. Instead, workplace psychologists look at the fit between an individual and an organization: “If I like rules and structure, and the organization is dynamic and fluid, that’s not a good match.”
Matchmaking gets tricky, though, when people are desperate. “Everybody wants a job right now, so people won’t tell you what they like,” Munz says. “They even try to fake the tests.”
Terence Bostic is a psychologist and senior consultant at CMA, a St. Louis management-consulting firm. CMA has questionnaires, he says, that are hard to fake: “People can lie, but we can tell they are lying. We can’t tell what they really think, but we can tell they’re being disingenuous.”
Whether they admit it, says Bostic, “Google perks,” things like gourmet take-home dinners and dry-cleaning facilities on-site, do matter to certain workers. “For others, those niceties—bringing your dog, doing your laundry at work—are fluff.” Those workers might prefer ego strokes, or contests and rewards, or lots of socializing, or improved efficiency.
CMA’s job is to figure out which carrot to dangle. More time with their manager or less? Public recognition or private praise? Security and stability or risk and challenge? Autonomy or the reassurance of being an important cog in a very smoothly turning wheel? Opportunities for advancement or permission to relax and stay put?
Four years ago, companies were hiring fast and often. “Now a lot of organizations are coming out of their retrenching and getting ready to build again, but they’re saying, ‘Let’s go slow and make sure we get someone who will fit into our culture,’” says Bostic.
And how do they then keep that person happy?
“Find out what they want,” he says. “There is no prefab answer.”
