US / 68 percent willing to take pay cut for more personally meaningful careers

Today’s top professionals and recent graduates expect their careers to provide more than just an income, a survey released by Philips North America found. The Philips Work/Life Survey examined key factors of Americans’ job happiness, with a particular focus on their ability to bring personal interests to their workplace career as a way to create more job satisfaction, achieve greater shared success with their employers, and improve overall well-being.

For baby boomers, work was about the stable paycheck and vertical climb up the corporate ladder. Generations X and Y are redefining the workforce attitude, and instead want to do and achieve what personally matters to them in an environment where respect and entrepreneurial behavior is encouraged. Accordingly, even in the face of a turbulent economy and competitive job market, 68 percent of working Americans would be willing to take a salary cut to work in a job that better allowed them to apply their personal interests to the workplace. Further, almost one quarter of workers (23 percent) would take a pay cut of 25 percent or more.

Companies also face a new challenge of a diminishing labor market of fewer qualified professionals with the skills needed to drive sustainable growth for multi-national, innovation-driven organizations. In fact, projections show that by 2021, there will be a technology talent deficit relative to talent supply growth versus talent demand growth in the U.S. and Canada of -.8 percent and -.9 percent respectively1. Coupled with an aging baby boomer workforce that will be replaced by a generation of workers that have vastly different career values relative to the role of work in one’s life, companies must adjust and focus organizational change efforts on bridging any human capital gaps.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via Satisfaction Beats Salary: Philips Work/Life Survey finds American workers willing to take pay cut for more personally meaningful careers.

Related Posts

The decline in job satisfaction and employee engagement

“The decline in job satisfaction and employee engagement revealed by the Government’s Skills and Employment Survey makes for worrying reading for businesses, the economy and wider society. But CIPD research shows that the voluntary sector appears to be bucking this trend, with valuable lessons to be learned for the private and public sectors. Nevertheless, we … Continue reading »

35% of workers are highly engaged, 26% disengaged and 17% detached

Globally, just over a third (35%) of the more than 32,000 full-time workers participating in our study are highly engaged writes HR consultants Towers Watson in Global Workforce Study Engagement at Risk: Driving Strong Performance in a Volatile Global Environment. (Adapted chosen excerpts by JMM to follow) On one level, this isn’t surprising. Five years of economic turmoil, nearly … Continue reading »

Canada – Workers No Longer Engaged in Jobs

Canada has a productivity gap that continues to create challenges for organizations attempting to becoming more competitive, a new report suggests. Towers Watson, a New York professional services company with an HR consulting office in Vancouver, released a report that exposes a lack of sustainable engagement in the Canadian workforce. According to Towers Watson, organizations … Continue reading »