Compensation and motivation are closely intertwined in the workplace, as the first and most important factor of a job for most people is going to be how much they make. How much someone makes completely defines their lifestyle, but it also quantifies how much an organization values someone and their skillsets. In my professional experience so far, I have personally experienced a co-worker leaving a position due to compensation, and a decrease in my own effort due to compensation.
In my current role, I’ve had many co-workers that have been frustrated with the compensation. One of my closest friends when I started had helped with my training, and was someone I could always go to for help. She was very skilled in her position, and she was cross-trained for every department of the organization. However, she wasn’t paid that much more than I or any of the new hires of that time were. She felt that this was unfair, as she had been with the organization for a few years and had consistently taken on new responsibilities across all departments. When she inquired our upper management about it, they said it wasn’t feasible for them to give her a wage increase since the position she was in was technically for a student and it had a great deal of flexibility. She argued that she was a masters student, and had enough hours that it shouldn’t have been counted as a student. More than anything though, she told me that the increase in money would be nice, but it felt like she wasn’t respected or valued for what she had been taking on. She decided to leave the organization due to this, and they have struggled to replace what she did since then.
When I started here, I was almost fully motivated to take the position due to the scheduling system and flexibility with my part-time nature as a student. However, while compensation was not as much of a motivating factor, this has changed with time. As time has gone on and I’ve been promoted and gained more responsibilities and skills, I’ve realized that I was falling into the same trap that my friend did before. Due to this, I’ve recently been looking for other job opportunities significantly more, and have overall experienced a lot less motivation to give my position my full attention and effort.
What these experiences have taught me is that it’s crucial that organizations recognize their hard-working and talented employees for what they do, and compensation can be a major way to do that. People take and leave positions for more reasons than just the money, but if the compensation an organization offers doesn’t accurately reflect the skills and responsibilities that hard-working employees take on, then it will lead to a workforce that feels cheated and unmotivated.