Workplace Happiness

Workplace Happiness
Working circle always plays a key part in human being life,from our ancestor to modern life, from simple career to most complicated one, from handy job to brainstorm skills, from low-skilled jobs to top management positions.No one refuses the fact that finding the true happiness in working could help to accelerate oneto achieve a good job, particularly in office-working life circle that isso-called themost complex type among avariety of ways of earning the living standard.
Arguing with their colleagues, being unsatisfied with their wages, finding no enthusiasm in their works, employees now tend to be unhappy at work and it has been being a tough problem to the employers in how to keep and maintain their labor system. Their mood depends on so many factors such as compensation, job characteristics, as well as working environment. This paper will discuss about these three main factors and analyze the differences between the old generation and the young generation in their attitudes at work. Through this discussion, both the employers and the employees can find a good way to fulfilled at work.
Compensation
Compensation plays an important role in employee satisfaction. A good compensation policy is not only making the employees more satisfied, it can also be a strong motivator for employees to work harder, perform to a higher standard.
Every company has its own missions and visions, and that leads to the differences in compensation among companies. Employee’s compensation depends on position, job performance, years of working, etc. A generous pay system is a good incentive for workers, but money alone is not enough! The thinking, pay more to make employees work harder, does not always work.
The matter is when, how long and how much salary can satisfy the employee. If the employee is strapped with financial problems, higher compensation will have the ability to get them working hard. Nevertheless, it only brings relief for a short term. If they meet their financial needs, their center concern is no longer money.
A reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller, the oil magnate, one of the richest men of all time, “How much money is enough?” In addition, that he replied, “A little bit more”. Mostpeople have the same feeling, just a little bit more, but never enough! This is the other reason that money can only work out for a short period of time (Link, 2012, para. 2).
However, there are three main factors that compensation is needed to fulfill.
Fair Pay
Fair pay is an important part of equality at work because pay is one of the ways in which an organization shows how much it values the contribution made by employees (Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, 2007, p. 1). Therefore, employees should get salary that deserves with what they work. If not, they may feel upset with company’s policy and try to find other company that can recognize their abilities and willing to pay appropriate compensation.
“In a short time period, experiments demonstrated that there was an immediate increase in performance when the study participants had to pay tied to their performance” (Schuldes, 2006, p. 22). Therefore, compensation needs to relate to job performance. It not only helps employees know they deserve with salary they get but also motivate them to work harder to achieve higher salary. Flexibility
It is wise and necessary to have some different salary structures in a large organization because of the existing of different class of workforce in one organization: managers, supervisors, staffs, workers. Usually, they paid basic wage and extra money according to the performance of the employee. Extra money could be bonus, commission, profit sharing, or piecework. The advantage for the employees is that they can increase their income while the employer has the advantage of greater production, higher sales, and profits.
In some cases, the employers can combine two or more types of additional payments. For example, from one of the authors’ observation, PhucThang Fine Furniture (Song Than 2 Industrial Park, Di An, Binh Duong) has a very urgent purchase order from its strategic overseas client. It needs to complete 1,200 pieces of items in October, 2012, so the BOD issue a new act for the worker in the factory that worker who is voluntary to work overtime can receive a bonus of VND 10,000 for each hour overtime in October and November. Therefore, typically, the total amount a worker can receive for a day at work includesbasic wage for eight working hours; piece work: VND 20,000 per unit completed; overtime work: (1.5 x basic wage for 1 hour x hours of working overtime) + bonus (Bonus: VND 10,000 x hours of working overtime).
Thus, PhucThang is using two types of additional payments at the same time. This act immediately increases the productivity of the workers, but disadvantage is that worker can rush their work and produce poor quality products, which the client could return and would give the company a poor reputation.
Policy Clarity
In many organizations, who get what and why is a cause for gossip, demotivation, and unhappiness for the employees. Therefore, policy about salary and compensation must be clear such as salary, bonus, pension, punishment and declare it to employees to let them know which pay level they have and what to achieve to get higher level, as well as which situation they may get minus to their monthly salary.
The salary policies of an organizations must be clear and concise, with clear guidance more likely the employees feel satisfied with their compensation. However, that does not mean the individual compensation is publicity, of course it is confidential, but the methods for determining pay must be clear and understandable. For this, the organization should have a number of ways to communicate these policies to employees: e-mail distribution, hard copy distribution, meetings, handbooks, trainings, etc.