Environments of Compensation and Benefits Administration

Worker Values

Today, worker values are changing. Some suggest that today's workers are less work-committed, that the usual work incentives have lost their effectiveness, and the new generation of workers often reject traditional values.

It is useful to identify three kinds of attitudes. There is:

Job involvement - the importance of work to people

Work values - what a person wants, needs, or expects from a job and

Job satisfaction - how much a person likes or dislikes a job

Job Involvement

Job involvement, often called work commitment, is particularly hard to isolate. It's obvious that more and more people want jobs, but many Americans consider their work less important to them than their leisure pursuits. Wanting a job and being willing to work hard are clearly separable and undoubtedly differ more for some segments of the workforce than others.

Work Values

Work values vary by occupation, education, family, and age.

Occupation

Administrative or Operative workers focus on economics. Professional or Management workers emphasize intrinsic factors, such as interesting work and opportunities to develop abilities, somewhat ahead of economic factors.

Education

The more education an employee has, the more likely they will stress intrinsic rewards such as job satisfaction and the ability to grow.

Family

Employees with children may have very different work values than employees without children. Male or female employees with children may have different needs or expectations in the workplace, including maternity leave, childcare services, flextime, working from home, etc.

Age

There is evidence that young workers place more importance than older workers on intrinsic factors such as degree of challenge, diversity and freedom.