My Experience with Compensation and Effort

When I think of compensation, I tend to associate high pay with more value. The CEO of a company makes all of the critical decisions that provide incredible value which is why they tend to have incredible salaries.  In my own experience, I have seen the amount of compensation directly affect the level of effort put forth by employees. I worked for a heavy civil and road work company and got to experience prevailing wage jobs and private wages jobs and the attitudes towards them. Firstly, the general mood among hourly employees is just better on prevailing wage jobs. Most employees are just happy to be there, but I did notice a difference in the effort employees would put forward. They seemed to work harder and were willing to work longer than their counterparts on private wage jobs. I think that part of this difference in work ethic was due to the natural response to a high hourly rate, it is expected to get a high-value performance. But also, part of the increased work ethic was because we worked about 50 percent private wage jobs and if you could prove yourself to be a stud on prevailing wages jobs the logic among the employees was that you will get placed on more prevailing wage jobs. Of course, when I asked management about it they told me that there is more to employee placement than that. And I think the last part of it was pride. And it wasn’t that these guys were not proud of the work they did on private jobs because they still did great work. But when you are getting paid the big buck you just feel better, about yourself, your job, and the project you are working on.