Small Biz Watch: Same pay, higher satisfaction
It's no surprise to anyone running a small business that happier employees means less turnover, less absenteeism, and high productivity. One way to make your workers happier, of course, is to hike their pay.
But that is not the only way—or the cheapest. A new study on job satisfaction among Canadian workers found that small increases in job satisfaction create as much happiness as large rises in income. The study found, for instance, that if job satisfaction for a particular job were reduced from 9 to 8 on a 10-point scale, income would have to be increased by more than 50 percent to compensate.
What are the most important nonfinancial factors in worker happiness? Often it's an employee's ability to control the job. In short, let the worker make more of the decisions. Other factors: having enough time to do the job, and—most important—having trustworthy bosses.