Eight out of ten American workers are satisfied in their current jobs, the Society for Human Resource Management reported this week. For the record, this is very similar to European workers' job satisfaction levels (subscription required).
But unfortunately for the SHRM, which hopes to use its annual conference in Las Vegas to promote the idea that HR practitioners are clued-up, hard-nosed professionals, the findings tend to indicate that its members don’t really have a clue what’s going on.
The 713 HR practitioners surveyed for the report reckon that the five most important aspects of job satisfaction are:
• Relationship with immediate supervisor (70%);
• Compensation/pay (67%);
• Management recognition of employee job performance (65%);
• Benefits (62%); and
• Communication between employees and senior management (60%).
But a group of 604 employees who were interviewed at length about their attitudes to their jobs reckon the five things that make them happy at work are:
• Compensation/pay (59%);
• Benefits (59%)
• Job security (53%);
• Flexibility to balance life and work issues (52%); and
• Communication between employees and senior management (51%).
Less than half the workers were interested in things like the relationship with their immediate manager (48%), while fewer still cared much for the “meaningfulness” of the job (37%) or career development opportunities (35%).
In other words, you can do all the work on corporate culture, career development and communication you want, you can thank people for a job well done until their eyes glaze over, but what they really want is the cash, and the right to come in and go home when they want.
Is anyone really surprised by that?
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