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SECTION B INTERVIEW
Interviewer: Good morning, Mr. West. Nice to have you on ore" program.
Interviewee: Good morning.
Interviewer: OK. We all work or very few people can get away with not working. Work is a fact of life when we're adults. But before, there wasn't a lot of choice in the selection of work. Now things are different.With greater mobility, the mobility that is offered when people have greater opportunities for higher education or training, more and more people are able to choose the fields that interest them . They can and do have opinions about what makes one job for them better than another job. So, Mr. West, what do people actually want from their jobs? What are workers' opinions, you know, about what makes one job better than another?
Interviewee: Well, to answer your questions, I'd like to look at two polls, two surveys. They were both done in the 1990s. The purposes were to find out what issues or job characteristics were especially important to workers.
Interviewer: Umm. What were they?
Interviewee: Some of you might guess that the answer is obvious.
Interviewer: I think so.
Interviewee: You might say "oh people just want higher salaries, more money." But let's see if that's true.
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewee: Now, the first poll. The first poll was taken in 1990, and this poll asked respondents to choose what was the most important to them among five items. And they were only allowed to choose one out of the five items.
Interviewer: So what were the five items?
Interviewee: Alright. The first item was important and meaningful work. The second was high income. The third was chances for advancement, promotion and so on. The fourth item was job security, and the fifth was shorter work hours, OK?
Interviewer: It would be interesting to know the survey results.
Interviewee: Yes, now let me tell you the results. 50% considered important and meaningful work the most important characteristic of a job. They didn't choose high income. Interesting. Anyway, 24% did say high income was the most important characteristic of a job. Of the remaining, 16% said chances for advancement was most important. Maybe these were younger workers, starting out on a career. 6% said job security and fmally4% said shorter work hours was most important.
Interviewer: I think what's striking about the results is that by far workers valued important and meaningful work as more important than any of the other characteristics, that included salary.
Interviewee: Yeah. Now I'm going to tell you about another poll, and this poll was taken a year later in 1991, and it asked the respondents to reflect on how important certain job characteristics were in their work.And this is a different type of poll because whereas in the first poll, respon- dents had to choose only one out of five, in this poll they wanted their respondents to react to each item separately. You know, this is to rank each item as "not important", "somewhat important", "important" or "very important". So they have four choices for each item.
Interviewer: Sorry to interrupt you. How many items altogether?
Interviewee: Oh, the poll had 16 items. Let me give you a few examples.
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewee: The second item they asked about is interesting work. They asked how important is interesting work to you. And again, I'm just going to tell you about how many people said it was very important. In this case, 78% of the respondents ranked this as very important to them.
Interviewer: 78%?
Interviewee: Yes, 78%. This is a key point, I think. One often sees people working for a lot less if they enjoy their work.
Interviewer: That's true.
Interviewee: The fourth item they asked about was opportunity to learn new skills. How important is that to you? 68% ranked this as very important. And I think that goes again to the idea of interest level, personal satisfaction, and the idea that people want their work to be meaningful.
Interviewer: Definitely.
Interviewee: Another item, item NO. 7, recognition from coworkers.. 62% of the respondents said that this was very important. It was important for them to be recognized, to be respected, and acknowl- edged for the work they've done. And I see recognition as a psychological benefit. There's no monetary reward necessarily attached to it, although sometimes they could be. But more people are looking for the psychological reward in terms of appreciation.
Interviewer: It seems to me that people value psychological reward a lot more than money.
Interviewee: That's right. At least the poll result seemed to say so. Now, let's take a look at another item, NO. 14.
Interviewer: OK!
Interviewee: NO. 14 was chances for promotion. 53% said that this was very important to them. It was im portant to them to have opportunities for advancement, chances for promotion. And I think this goes along with high income and recognition. That's both a psychological reward, promo tion, as well as a monetary reward.
Interviewer: Umm.
Interviewee: 15 is contact with a lot of people. Some people are very people-oriented, and 52% said that this was very important to them.
Interviewer: So we can see workers do have a lot of things that are very huportant to them.
Interviewee: Yes, but you can also see the variation in numbers. But a note of caution here. These are av erages, and polls talk about averages. But still I think it is important for employers to become more aware of polls like these because it might allow them to keep their workers satisfied in ways that maybe they haven't thought of before.
Interviewer: Yeah, OK. Thank you very much Mr. West for talking to us on the program.
Interviewee: Pleasure.
