s/o Satisfying Compensation - Patty Joanna

[EmilyGF]

In the LEO discussion, it was mentioned that salary is not in the top 3 things that keeps employees satisfied, and that over the last 50 years teachers have lost all those top three.

 

I expect it includes respect and autonomy. I'd like to hear more, Patty Joanna!

 

In addition, what makes homeschooling (as a part of your life) satisfying? I'm going to mull on this question. I've posted in the past about boredom but I'd like to hear what others have to say, first.

 

Emily

[MommyLiberty5013]

Setting my own family's schedule and not being beholden to any schedule except DHs job.

[SKL]

Guessing - making a contribution, feeling part of a team, growing as a person?

[Crimson Wife]

Workload is a big one in the corporate world. If one job expects 80-100+ hours/week and 24/7/365 availability, while another is around 60 hours/week and respectful of evenings/weekends/holidays, then pay may be of secondary concern.

 

My DH just started a new job and it's so nice to have him home by 6:30 P.M. rather than 9. He said his boss left at 4:50 P.M. and he didn't hear from the guy the rest of the night, which would've been totally unheard of in his previous position. His old boss used to send emails late at night and expect DH to respond promptly.

[Carrie12345]

I have collected so many different "satisfaction markers" over the past decades that I couldn't even begin to remember them all.  I should probably start writing them down for the days when I want to run away, screaming.

 

Freedom, flexibility, autonomy... most of the detail revolve around those.

 

Plus, I think I've got pretty awesome kids.  I think it's fair to say some of that awesomeness would be present had they gone to public school, but a very large chunk of it has been fostered by the unique experiences and we wouldn't have been able to (or maybe even thought to) give them if we didn't homeschool.

[Guest]

I'm just popping in to get a *star* by the post so I can find it later.  :0). Errands to run...  It's a little bit of an essay...

 

[Zinnia]

Autonomy is the worst thing about homeschooling for me.  I feel that as a lot of pressure.  A lot of pressure to get it right, to not screw up, to not make mistakes.  If it goes wrong (and it could so easily go wrong), it is literally ALL my fault.  All me.  

 

It is difficult to find community, and within that community, even more difficult to find people that are willing to talk shop and want to discuss nitty gritty details and brainstorm.  There is very little collaborration in anything I do.  It's all me, and it's a heavy weight.  

But I think that's a unique problem, because every.single.homeschooler I've ever met (and most on here) just love, love, love the autonomy and freedom it gives.

 

The said, there are things that help make it a lot more satisfying.  Last year, dh got a promotion which (I think) will allow me to stay at home for the next 20 years.  I don't have to worry about keeping up perfectly with the public school in case I need to go back to work anyday and enroll my kids.  That security that I can work out the education of my children over time, and it doesn't have to be so high pressured to perform has been really nice.

 

I like knowing that I'm making a difference that couldn't be met in other ways.  I have two profoundly dyslexic children.  If I was not homeschooling, we could not afford to send them both to private dyslexia specific schools, like I would want (my salary wouldn't cover tuition x 2).  So I am making a distinct, needful difference in their lives.  I've also dived in headfirst to reading and learning how to teach to the dyslexic brain over the last year or two, and as always, I love learning new stuff, and I find that very satisfying.

 

 

 

 

[Zinnia]

I used to work as a nurse, then a nurse-midwife.  The jobs that I liked the best (and were the most satisfying) were heavy on the teamwork, the collaboration, the community of work.  One job encouraged (and even frequently paid for) colleagues to get together outside of work frequently, to build bonds and that sense of community.  Even years later, I'm still in contact with some of those coworkers.  

 

One job wasn't as much about the outside-of-work community, but the whole department functioned as a team.  It was a teaching hospital, and residents and attendings, nurses, midwives, CNAs, CRNAs....everyone had a voice, and it was understood that everyone had a part to play on the team, and that everyone's voice was important and worth hearing.  Of course, some voices had more weight, but that department worked together so well, soup to nuts.  And when they didn't, anyone in the place could call an "emperor has no clothes" style meeting and bring their frustrations out into the open to be worked on.  And people really did work on them.  It was an amazing, amazing place to work.  I still miss it, 15 years later.  

Both very satisfying.

[Guest]

I'll be the outlier and say salary was always my #1. Title me what you want, give me a cube, an office, whatever. But pay up, buttercup. It always was interesting to me that people would take less money as long as they got a nice title.....

 

For homeschooling.....that's a good question. I love feeling like I'm instrumental in my children's education and not merely along for someone else's plan. I love the researching, the planning, the trial and error of implementation. Most of all I love the time it gives me to learn new things as compared to a career where my time limited what I had time to focus on outside of keeping up with research for my industry. I love being a SAHM/Homeschooling Mom. I don't miss my career or the ladder climbing one bit.

[Guest]

OK, so here is the I-hope-mini essay.

 

I did research into what people in different professions found to be job satisfiers, based on a framework of three major areas of satisfaction:  power, achievement, affiliation.  What I found was that hardly anyone finds ALL their satisfaction in any of the three areas, but that usually one of these three was dominant, with a measure of one or both the others thrown in.  

 

First, I'll define the terms, and state a caveat right up front:  

 

Caveat:  this is based on statistical data.  It is not anecdotal.  That said, I myself can provide anecdotal support for saying the statistics are wrong.  "I know a guy who is really motivated by xyzzy and you say that he should't be a good at this job, but he really is!"  The thing is, working with statistics is different from working with individual people who don't fit the statistics.  So bear that in mind when you read this.  Statistics don't say "That guy can't be good at this because he doesn't fit the statistical profile."  They say, "Statistically, this is a norm in a significant sample size."  OK?

 

Definition of Terms

Power is about being able to effect change--to make things happen for and with (and sometimes to) other people.  (It's not power-madness.)

Achievement is about accomplishment that is measureable and that usually involves standardized tools to achieve a measurable goal.

Affiliation is about being part of something bigger than oneself--it is not about people-pleasing, but about doing something as part of a larger group.  

 

Most of my research focused on the world of education, but the results gave a way of thinking about satisfiers outside that universe.

 

One of the most interesting (to me) conclusions was that the structure for promotion and advancement in public schools was broken.  The things that make people want to be teachers and make them good at it are very different from the things that make people want to be administrators and make them good at it.  But the usual path toward being an administrator is through teaching, and one of the ways teachers "advance" is to administration...meaning that at some point, in the public school career path, you're going to be terrible at your job and find it dissatisfying.

 

The main satisfier for teachers *tends* to be power.  Some have spoken of autonomy, and this is part of power.  It means that when you shut the door of your classroom, you are captain of the ship.  You have a lot of space to be creative, to bring the love of your subject to your students, to find ways of inviting them into the love of the subject.  Most often, affiliation is a secondary satisfier; teachers are not in this alone--there is a larger universe in which they are involved, whether it be the mathematicians through the ages, the classes with which they work, the larger community in which they participate.  The respect of the community is a satisfier.  Achievement is less present as a satisfier.

 

OK--so let's look at what has happened in teaching over the past 50 years.  Central district planning has taken over telling teachers what they can teach, even to the point of producing daily lesson plans.  If teacher were *achievement* oriented, they would be happy to tick off the box, "Got that done!"  But they are not.  The captaining of the ship has been taken away.  Teachers cannot select the literature, or even how it is presented.  The way they teach math is prescribed.  Add in the changing goals--from being educated to be a good citizen to being trained to get high test scores--and there is another shift to achievement.   One doesn't teach Pride and Prejudice out of love for literature and all that one can see in it, but because there is going to be a question about it on the SAT.  One doesn't teach arithmetic to prepare students for math or for life in general but because it's going to be on the test, and in a very specific pedagogical manner which may or may not have anything to do with arithmetic.  Public school teachers have done some things to shoot themselves in their collective foot, I will say--and these things have cost them the respect of the community *as a body*.  Not as individual teachers, but as a body.  In recent years, there has been some recovery of this respect because teachers have submitted to testing to prove subject matter competence, but it is a recovery period, not a step forward.  

 

Anyway, there are a lot of other examples about how teachers who have power and some affiliation needs met in their jobs, but I don't want to write them all out.  But here is the thing:  the very activities that satisfy teachers have been largely taken away from them.  And so it becomes about pay, about the money.  It was when the satisfiers were taken away that the cry for higher pay really took off--because it is at least some substitute for what is truly desired.  

 

Accountants, engineers, these are jobs that have high achievement needs.  School administrators tend to fall into this as a main satisfier, or at least to split power/achievement as drivers.  They tend to have low affiliation needs.  

 

So when a teacher wants a change from teaching the same thing for many years, which happens, what is the usual advancement path?  Administration.  And there is not a good match if the teacher has been a typical good teacher.  And what about the person who knows from the get-go they want to be an administrator?  They have to go be teachers for a few years to get on the career path.  

 

That last was the thing I was researching.  What can the public schools do to attract and keep good teachers and administrators?  What is a good career path for each?  But I found the whole project to be tremendously interesting, and I used the information myself in thinking about my next career move, which turned out to be *very* satisfying for me.  And when I was homeschooling, I knew that with my Personal Satisfier Cocktail, I was going to love the autonomy, the creativity, the ability to be captain of the ship--but that it was going to be a difficult job if I didn't find a way to include my affiliation needs.  And that is where this discussion board and a support group came into play--and made all the difference.  

 

I hope this was at least a little interesting.  I don't even know where that research work is LOCATED in my house anymore, or I would dig it up and do a better presentation of all of this.  

[Carol in Cal.]

 

 

The main satisfier for teachers *tends* to be power.  Some have spoken of autonomy, and this is part of power.  It means that when you shut the door of your classroom, you are captain of the ship.  You have a lot of space to be creative, to bring the love of your subject to your students, to find ways of inviting them into the love of the subject.  Most often, affiliation is a secondary satisfier; teachers are not in this alone--there is a larger universe in which they are involved, whether it be the mathematicians through the ages, the classes with which they work, the larger community in which they participate.  The respect of the community is a satisfier.  Achievement is less present as a satisfier.

 

OK--so let's look at what has happened in teaching over the past 50 years.  Central district planning has taken over telling teachers what they can teach, even to the point of producing daily lesson plans.  If teacher were *achievement* oriented, they would be happy to tick off the box, "Got that done!"  But they are not.  The captaining of the ship has been taken away.  Teachers cannot select the literature, or even how it is presented.  The way they teach math is prescribed.  Add in the changing goals--from being educated to be a good citizen to being trained to get high test scores--and there is another shift to achievement.   One doesn't teach Pride and Prejudice out of love for literature and all that one can see in it, but because there is going to be a question about it on the SAT.  One doesn't teach arithmetic to prepare students for math or for life in general but because it's going to be on the test, and in a very specific pedagogical manner which may or may not have anything to do with arithmetic. 

 

See, this is why I hate teaching VBS (totally canned, meticulously timed program) but loved writing and teaching the Sunday School openings for years and years.

[EmilyGF]

Thanks, Patty Joanna! This is really fascinating to me.

 

I do see how my dad is being paid in money instead of in respect and how angry it makes him. I wonder if his boss realizes how much money he could save if he would just show his employees consideration. And I see how autonomy is being removed from some jobs right now and wonder how the place plans to keep employees who partly wanted the job based on autonomy... it seems like very short term thinking. 

 

What sort of degree did you do so that your research was in this? 

​Emily

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Patty Joanna! This is really fascinating to me.

 

I do see how my dad is being paid in money instead of in respect and how angry it makes him. I wonder if his boss realizes how much money he could save if he would just show his employees consideration. And I see how autonomy is being removed from some jobs right now and wonder how the place plans to keep employees who partly wanted the job based on autonomy... it seems like very short term thinking. 

 

What sort of degree did you do so that your research was in this? 

​Emily

I'm glad it was interesting.  I always found the topic interesting, as well as practical.  Like I mentioned, it helped me find my path which was a wonderful one, but another real benefit was that it helped me understand my dad, who had a completely different set of satisfiers, so we had never understood each other's choices.  

 

The work was in an MBA, the work was part of a graduate assistantship in organizational behavior and operations management.  :0)

[Arctic Bunny]

I'm glad it was interesting. I always found the topic interesting, as well as practical. Like I mentioned, it helped me find my path which was a wonderful one, but another real benefit was that it helped me understand my dad, who had a completely different set of satisfiers, so we had never understood each other's choices.

 

The work was in an MBA, the work was part of a graduate assistantship in organizational behavior and operations management. :0)

I think you should forward this to the powers that be at my DH's organization.... because they seem intent on doing the exact opposite.

[Guest]

I think you should forward this to the powers that be at my DH's organization.... because they seem intent on doing the exact opposite.

 

Yeah.  No one ever listens to me.  :0)  Oh well.  That's good preparation for motherhood.  haha. 

 

Seriously, I'm sorry.  I think the corporate workplace has deteriorated in the past 20 years, and I'm glad I'm not in it.  I hope my son can find a way as an entrepreneur, which has its own problems but it is less of a personal beatdown.  And there are some corporations that are at least making a try.  It's complex, and it is not all the fault of any one entity...it's as much a reflection of society at large as it ever has been.  It's rough though, that's for sure.  

[Arctic Bunny]

Yeah. No one ever listens to me. :0) Oh well. That's good preparation for motherhood. haha.

 

Seriously, I'm sorry. I think the corporate workplace has deteriorated in the past 20 years, and I'm glad I'm not in it. I hope my son can find a way as an entrepreneur, which has its own problems but it is less of a personal beatdown. And there are some corporations that are at least making a try. It's complex, and it is not all the fault of any one entity...it's as much a reflection of society at large as it ever has been. It's rough though, that's for sure.

Do you think the stereotypical "millennial" has had anything to do with it? It seems that HR and The Powers That Be are scrambling to make the organization attractive to them and are simultaneously a) failing miserably; b ) alienating those that are 35+. Like they haven't figured out what makes the millennial tick, but in trying, they have destroyed all the satisfiers of formerly satisfied employees.

[SKL]

In MBA school, we took a test to see if we were most motivated by power, achievement, or affiliation.  I was almost equal on all 3, but achievement was #1, which makes sense for me.  :)  Of course that was just one of many ways people and their motivations can be categorized.  :)

 

Now you have reminded me of those ORBH classes (organizational behavior) I was required to take almost 30 years ago.  :P  I thought the classes were fun, but didn't really think we'd apply much of the learning to the "real world."  In retrospect, I found the insights useful in thinking about my own talents and goals and how to get along with diverse people.  Not so much in managing organizations.  The systems in place are too inflexible for that.

[SKL]

I don't find money particularly motivating, but I've found it de-motivating at times - when I knew others were being paid a lot more despite my producing more than them.  It's not that I wanted the money, but rather that money was the main measure of how much that employer valued an employee.  Obviously.  It may be that those people (generally big-mouthed men) just demanded more money than I did, because it was important to them.  Who knows?  I'm glad I'm in a completely different environment now.

[Crimson Wife]

When you're making 1 person do the tasks that used to be split among 10 people, at a certain point it doesn't matter how many Restricted Stock Units and fancier titles you throw at that person, that person is going to walk away for a job that allows him/her to have a life. The RSU's that won't vest for another 3 years aren't worth the risk of a stress-related heart attack/stroke.

[forty-two]

My dh worked for as a substance abuse counselor at a non-profit for a while. Extremely low pay, and intrinsically hard and frustrating work (most of their clients were there because of court orders and weren't interested in getting clean) - and it was also a very dysfunctional, excrement-rolls-downhill kind of work environment. I always thought that while they couldn't help the hard/frustrating nature of counseling addicts, and maybe couldn't do much about the low pay, they still could have improved job satisfaction so much if they'd created a better work culture.

 

As it was, the place had ridiculous turnover, and tptb were continually was shocked when entirely foreseeable and preventable problems occurred. Which they reacted to by blaming their subordinates, down the line from the off-site big boss down to the most recently hired counselor; they expected their underlings to magically solve everything without any support and do impossible things like cram 80 hours of work into 40, while not doing a stitch of work off the clock. (They hired dh to cover two full-time positions - I thought he would get a ton of overtime - but they strictly limited him to 40 hours and no off the clock work, and wondered why he couldn't get everything done.). It was awful - and mostly because of intangibles.

[EmilyGF]

When you're making 1 person do the tasks that used to be split among 10 people, at a certain point it doesn't matter how many Restricted Stock Units and fancier titles you throw at that person, that person is going to walk away for a job that allows him/her to have a life. The RSU's that won't vest for another 3 years aren't worth the risk of a stress-related heart attack/stroke.

 

That sounds terrible, and I don't think anyone is arguing that better benefits would make that doable.

 

One specific situation I have in mind is where a boss belittles all his employees. They have reasonable (but not great) pay but are given no respect and very little autonomy. I saw how they worked before he became the boss when he bought out the company. They were extremely creative and productive. They still do everything required by check boxes, but no longer do the things that really made the company shine. They no longer have trust or respect.

 

Emily

[Liz CA]

Interesting subject. I do like autonomy = setting my appointments given certain parameters, deciding on how to proceed, the feeling of being able to help someone (mostly those who want to be helped) and I do like getting together with others in the field but I am selective about this, so not random or blanket affiliations. I also consider myself a life long learner and continue research review of relevant info on a regular basis.

Money is certainly not the biggest satisfier. Had it been money, I would have gone to law school :) or into business and that would have been a disaster in and of itself.

Edited July 21, 2017 by Liz CA

[SKL]

My dh worked for as a substance abuse counselor at a non-profit for a while. Extremely low pay, and intrinsically hard and frustrating work (most of their clients were there because of court orders and weren't interested in getting clean) - and it was also a very dysfunctional, excrement-rolls-downhill kind of work environment. I always thought that while they couldn't help the hard/frustrating nature of counseling addicts, and maybe couldn't do much about the low pay, they still could have improved job satisfaction so much if they'd created a better work culture.

 

As it was, the place had ridiculous turnover, and tptb were continually was shocked when entirely foreseeable and preventable problems occurred. Which they reacted to by blaming their subordinates, down the line from the off-site big boss down to the most recently hired counselor; they expected their underlings to magically solve everything without any support and do impossible things like cram 80 hours of work into 40, while not doing a stitch of work off the clock. (They hired dh to cover two full-time positions - I thought he would get a ton of overtime - but they strictly limited him to 40 hours and no off the clock work, and wondered why he couldn't get everything done.). It was awful - and mostly because of intangibles.

 

I had a job like that.  Not in a non-profit, not in an intrinsically unsatisfying job, but in a similar management environment.  Even though I desperately needed the income, I put in my notice after 7 months.  During my 7 months, I calculated the turnover rate and it was 100% per year (given that some jobs turned over multiple times and a few stoic people stuck it out longer).  Besides being hired to replace two full-time workers and catch up work that was months or years behind and also take on additional duties ... I was ordered to fire two subordinates so I could take over their jobs too.  Meanwhile the owner's wife went around screaming (literally) and setting fires I needed to put out.  I almost lost my mind in that short time period.  The owners probably still have no idea that they were doing anything wrong.

 

And the favorite statement of bad managers is:  "Don't work harder, work smarter."  Oh such a brilliant phrase.  If only we could all work smarter and shorten our work week!

[Guest]

When you're making 1 person do the tasks that used to be split among 10 people, at a certain point it doesn't matter how many Restricted Stock Units and fancier titles you throw at that person, that person is going to walk away for a job that allows him/her to have a life. The RSU's that won't vest for another 3 years aren't worth the risk of a stress-related heart attack/stroke.

Every time my dh left a job, he was replaced by three people.

 

My dh and my dad both invented things that have a direct impact on every person in this board. Neither of them patented the idea or invention. They were happy to have ACHIEVED what they did. But had they had more of a power motivator, well, let's just call my personal Jimmy Choo supplier.

 

They never complained about lack of recognition because it didn't matter to them. But the being replaced by three peopl bugged the tar out of my dh because no one recognized what he had achieved.

 

It's an interesting thing, that.

[Laura Corin]

I'm glad it was interesting. I always found the topic interesting, as well as practical. Like I mentioned, it helped me find my path which was a wonderful one, but another real benefit was that it helped me understand my dad, who had a completely different set of satisfiers, so we had never understood each other's choices.

 

The work was in an MBA, the work was part of a graduate assistantship in organizational behavior and operations management. :0)

Very interesting, Patty Joanna. I work as a university administrator, supporting academics who are the named decision makers on administrative matters. Their contracts normally specify research, teaching and admin elements, but there is considerable difficulty on the admin side, particularly with the older staff. They don't value it and they often do it poorly. Meanwhile the specialist administrators have to wait and wheedle to get tasks done.

[displace]

Autonomy is the worst thing about homeschooling for me. I feel that as a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure to get it right, to not screw up, to not make mistakes. If it goes wrong (and it could so easily go wrong), it is literally ALL my fault. All me.

 

It is difficult to find community, and within that community, even more difficult to find people that are willing to talk shop and want to discuss nitty gritty details and brainstorm. There is very little collaborration in anything I do. It's all me, and it's a heavy weight.

 

But I think that's a unique problem, because every.single.homeschooler I've ever met (and most on here) just love, love, love the autonomy and freedom it gives.

 

The said, there are things that help make it a lot more satisfying. Last year, dh got a promotion which (I think) will allow me to stay at home for the next 20 years. I don't have to worry about keeping up perfectly with the public school in case I need to go back to work anyday and enroll my kids. That security that I can work out the education of my children over time, and it doesn't have to be so high pressured to perform has been really nice.

 

I like knowing that I'm making a difference that couldn't be met in other ways. I have two profoundly dyslexic children. If I was not homeschooling, we could not afford to send them both to private dyslexia specific schools, like I would want (my salary wouldn't cover tuition x 2). So I am making a distinct, needful difference in their lives. I've also dived in headfirst to reading and learning how to teach to the dyslexic brain over the last year or two, and as always, I love learning new stuff, and I find that very satisfying.

I also am not awesomely happy with my full autonomy. I think it has to do with kids being well outside the range of average. Therefore (for us), most curriculum is useless to an extent, progress in some subjects is slow, it's hard to assess growth with any standard test, standard goals can be useless, etc. And we are working with students and we've never done this before, so it's hard to know if we're doing it right or not.

 

I do like the autonomy to an extent (which is why DS is not in public school), but it's hard to bear when there's fewer options for curriculum, specialized things needed (combined with increased costs), and a need to specialize in studies when just starting out with homeschooling. Plus all the emotions and stress involved with teaching and the child learning a super difficult task, trying to please and perform but maybe not being able to, and frequently a lack of attention to more fun subjects.

[Crimson Wife]

Every time my dh left a job, he was replaced by three people.

 

Senior management is not filling DH's old position because they had been planning to downsize the department later this fall. DH had been assured that he would be safe but he'd known that the downsizing would've just added to his workload so he jumped ship as soon as he had the chance.

 

He just found out last night from a former colleague that his 2nd line supervisor gave sr management an ultimatum- let the guy work remotely from TX or he's leaving for another job as of August. The COL difference between the S.F. Bay Area and TX would be effectively doubling or maybe more the purchasing power of his salary.

[nixpix5]

I love the autonomy, flexibility and spontaneity. I love the creativity I think the most. I love putting into practice with my own kids all of the educational beliefs I have held through watching education fail in the places I have worked. I learned alot about what not to do and figured out what did work. Plus I agree with a previous poster about having great kids. My kids are so awesome they look staged to people (no really...I have had people say that). They are polite bright, well behaved, inquisitive, loving and devoted to their family. I have people ask me constantly what my secret is but nobody wants to hear "homeschool".