There`s life after work

Money doesn`t motivate you, it keeps you from being de-motivated, says an old HR adage.

Much as this sounds out of place in an industry that pays higher than average salaries and produces some extremely affluent young professionals, it does find confirmation in our survey.

[CHART]Our survey finds that the best-paid people really do appreciate their packages. Those who said they were "very satisfied" with their compensation package reported the highest median salary, and those who were "satisfied" reported the second best median salary.

The only deviation occurs in the finding that the "very dissatisfied" are on average paid more than those who were merely "dissatisfied".

[CHART]More thought-provoking findings were revealed when the respondents rated the factors most important to their job satisfaction. Money didn`t even make it to the top three. Rated as most important were holiday leave and flexible working hours, followed by prestige from peers.

Only in fourth place come monetary factors - company stock, building shareholder value and compensation package.

Remuneration is not the number one job satisfaction factor, and yet people leave for a 15% increase at the drop of a hat.

Mark Bussin, partner, 21^st Century Business and Pay Solutions

"These findings are in line with all national and international staff motivation research, which shows that remuneration is not the number one job satisfaction factor," says Mark Bussin, partner at 21^st Century Business and Pay Solutions. "And yet, people leave for a 15% increase at the drop of a hat," he comments.

Janette Cumming, a director of Paracon Holdings, says: "Holiday leave, flexibility and working from home are the strong job satisfaction indicators that we are seeing, which doesn`t mean that companies are getting any more flexible. But it`s what people want, so companies need to listen."

Some are indeed listening. Cumming talks of some big groups which have increased leave as part of their staff retention policy from the basic 15-day requirement to 20 days.

But smaller companies, even if they would listen to what their staff want, cannot afford to grant longer leave periods. "It`s a trade-off," says Cumming. "If they don`t take leave, you have tired, burnt out people."

Andre Besselaar, head of Innovative HR Strategies, believes flexible working hours can be used as a strategy for motivating employees. "The IT industry has one major advantage: people can carry on with their allocated tasks at any time and place using portable or multiple hardware systems. Flexibility will also mean that staff can adapt their working hours around their lifestyle. A significant finding here is that working from home is gaining some following."

Money has never been the biggest factor of job satisfaction. People just want to be needed and appreciated as individuals - that`s the bottom line concept for everybody.

Jill Hamlyn, MD, The People Business

But it seems the hindrance to flexible time and working from home is the very lack of flexibility on the part of management.

[TABLE]"We have done it successfully with a number of contractors, but typically only where the employers know the contractor from previous projects," says Cumming.

Jill Hamlyn, MD of the People Business, believes flexibility in work time has a long way to go. "I think we still have to get the base of management right before good half-day management occurs."

But even before managers become more open-minded about employees working from home, mobility has hit a new obstacle - the computer networks vulnerability.

"People are becoming more worried about the security of their dial-in systems," notes Cumming. "The big corporates with heavy firewalls and network security systems are fine, but the smaller companies won`t allow it, so they lose out on a whole workforce that`s sitting at home not working."

Besselaar says that some of the more common motivating factors found in international staff motivation research are career growth, an exciting and challenging job, meaningful work, working with great people, and having a good boss. He says it has been noted that in cases where contractors are paid significantly above market rates, the motivational level declines if work is routine, below the skills level of the contractor and if no growth opportunity exists, leading to resignation in favour of lower paid but more stimulating work.

Interestingly, our respondents rated job responsibility and technical challenge as least important.

"It is a common trend in the IT industry that employees tend to accumulate leave as a result of continuous tight deadlines," comments Besselaar. "The survey respondents are expressing employees` need to relax more."

The reality, he warns, is that with the growing shortage of IT skills in South Africa, existing IT staff will have less opportunity to take extended or regular holidays and hence extending more leave benefits may not be practical.

And perhaps that`s exactly why our respondents place more value on the harder-to-get quality of life factors.