What is more important from work - pay/perks or empowerment?

[handsomeharry]

@Ravenman

Actually, I cited someone as an expert on this subject who is all about “empowerment” (if you want to boil the issue down to that) and he is about as far away from corporate America as you can get. He’s far more Birkenstocks than wingtips.

Wow! Who would think that a Birkenstock-wearer would say something like that???

hh

[Wesley_Clark]

@Voyager

I chose B - but I might have chosen C, the power to do what I want.

Empowerment is a form of respect, and I think respect is everything. If they pay you a crappy salary, I can see money being number one, since lack of money is lack of respect. Once you are doing well enough that this is not that huge an issue, then empowerment becomes everything.
I get to pick my projects and get to do a lot of industry activities as part of my job. If they told me that I’d have to only do assigned jobs, but that I was getting a 20% raise, I’d be out the door in five minutes flat. (And 20% of my salary is not chickenfeed.) Now, the fun stuff I do is useful, and often is stuff that they don’t realize they need until they hit a snag and find I have the solution already, but it is fun.

I bet I could be making more money if I toed the line during some times in my career - but I’d also be dealing with a lot more stress. Now excuse me, I have to go back to coding a tool to do something which more or less everyone says is impossible to do - but will only take me a week or two.

Benign empowerment, yes. I can see that playing a strong role. In my job I like having some flexibility and autonomy.

However I do get the impression that some companies are just trying to abuse the concept to avoid giving any sort of material reward. The independent contractor employee/employer relationship is becoming more and more popular, and I have read it may become a bigger form of work relationships than typical employee relationships. A reason is that contractors do not get paid sick days, paid vacations, personal days, pensions, 401k matches, health benefits, etc. Employers also pay less in taxes, which shifts the burden onto workers via higher fuel, property, sales, etc. taxes.

Like others have said, it fundamentally comes down to respect. I am not going to be surprised if more and more companies switch to independent contractor models to save on benefits and taxes, then try to ‘empower’ workers with some BS dog and pony show to distract them.

[Superhal]

Imho, when perks/pay aren’t a factor, people start complaining about other things like “happiness.”

[Wesley_Clark]

Here we go. From an article about the creation of a permatemp workforce in the US:
http://cp2test.msnbc.msn.com/id/34769831/ns/business-careers//

Employers prize flexibility, of course. But if they aren’t careful they can wind up with an alienated, dispirited workforce. A Conference Board survey released on Jan. 5 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling. Poor morale can devastate performance. After making deep staff cuts following the subprime implosion, UBS, Credit Suisse, and American Express hired Harvard psychology lecturer Shawn Achor to train their remaining employees in positive thinking. Says Achor: “All the employees had just stopped working.”

Basically, take away worker’s health care, retirement benefits, paid holidays, sick days, job security, etc. while increasing their workload w/o higher wages until they are demoralized, then hire someone to come in and preach positive thinking to distract them.

I think of that when I think of ‘empowerment’. If empowerment is meant to imply respect or autonomy, then yeah that is more important than money. But I think to a large degree it is going to be used to placate people while you wear them down. Take away their health benefits, then let them vote on what color to paint the break room, etc.