If someone offered you a 10% salary increase for a job that feels meaningless, bores you, and surrounds you with people you don’t respect, in a place with no future—would you take it? If your answer is “no,” you’re not alone. Many professionals across various industries are willing to forgo higher salaries for a more fulfilling work environment.
A 2018 study found that 9 out of 10 people would give up 23% of their lifetime earnings for meaningful work. Even before the pandemic, numerous studies showed that people were willing to trade salary for better flexibility and work-life balance. A 2016 study by Fidelity Investments revealed that younger generations are prepared to take a pay cut for what they define as “quality of work life,” which includes career development, meaning, work-life balance, organizational culture, and more.
I recently encountered a discussion among younger professionals at the heart of the labor market demand. They face multiple job offers with figures that only a hot market can generate. Behind closed doors, far from the headlines, you hear the considerations that lead them to choose offers that don’t necessarily include the highest salary.
In a time of a heated job market, rising salaries, and billboards aimed at branding employers, it’s important to recognize the motivational paycheck—the components other than salary that drive many decisions connecting people to work. For employers, understanding these components is crucial not only because it might cost less but also because it will allow you to attract the people you truly need and want in this era. Then, retain them through a connection with meaning.
Growing Continuously: Personal and Professional Development
As employers, you have an opportunity to create strategies that make working with you a source of personal and professional growth. It starts with focusing on developing managers. Effective managers help employees understand how their work advances their careers and ensure it does. This includes regular and immediate feedback, relative autonomy in shaping roles, projects outside their current roles to acquire new skills and experience, and maintaining open dialogue with employees.
In any case, the role you are hiring for today will not look the same in three years. You know it, and the employee knows it. Therefore, we seek people who can develop and grow continuously into who we need them to be. Today’s employees understand they cannot rely solely on what they learned a few years ago; they know each tenure should advance them in the right direction. Naturally, they want to develop all the time. Unlike the career ladder of the past, this does not necessarily mean promotion in the organizational hierarchy. Consequently, we see organizations investing in career centers, future skills training, and creating processes that facilitate horizontal movement within the organization.
Making an Impact: Contributing Meaningfully
Organizations are accustomed to connecting people to work through role definitions and hierarchy. The problem in a time of rapid change is that many tasks and people don’t fit precisely into these definitions. As work transitions from hierarchy to networks, the best way to place the right people in the right roles, from the organization’s perspective, is also the best way to connect people to organizations—allowing them to feel their abilities are utilized and that they can express themselves.
Now is the time to soften job definitions and create mechanisms for transparency about projects, horizontal opportunities, and even roles. Remove barriers and enable people to know what is happening in the organization, allowing them to move to places that suit their skills and interests, where they can realize their potential and maximize their abilities.
Knowing the Purpose: Understanding the Bigger Picture
Research has shown the importance of meaning in work for several years now. Whether it’s due to generational shifts or the erosion of the promise of stability, employees are no longer willing to compromise on values. They want to invest their time and energy in places that align with their values, provide personal growth, offer a shared goal they connect to, and inspire them.
Managing an organization through personal metrics that define individual or group tasks is outdated. These old tools ensure the total work in the organization is merely the sum of individuals’ efforts, but they don’t harness the collective brainpower and passion of your people to achieve your goals in every possible way. This is where leadership comes in—leading people toward a goal worth striving for, making them proud of their workplace. For employees to do what is right and necessary, they need a collective call across the organization that unites them towards a common goal. When this call is inspiring, they will not only overcome obstacles; they won’t even see them.
Being Heard: Experiencing Authentic Communication
During the pandemic, we clearly saw that authentic communication bridges distance. If you know someone, it’s much easier to resolve misunderstandings, overcome ambiguities, and close loops. Authenticity cannot be faked, nor can transparency. Moreover, in the absence of information, people tend to fill in the gaps, often assuming the worst.
Managers play a crucial role in making employees feel heard. Everything managers say and do—or don’t say and do—speaks volumes. We’ve all been in meetings where we felt comfortable sharing our thoughts freely, and we’ve also been in meetings where we wouldn’t dream of saying what we really think. This is the difference between an organization that makes its people feel listened to and one that signals they should filter their thoughts and only share what’s wanted.
Anyone who wants to harness their people needs to communicate openly, put the facts on the table, and involve everyone in finding solutions. This not only builds a culture of openness and trust but also leads to innovative solutions you hadn’t thought of.
Feeling Valued: Earning Trust and Appreciation
The blurring between who we are and what we do strengthens the need for people to know that their actions, investment, and time are valued, contributing, and worthwhile. In the past, feedback was treated as an annual performance review process. But daily engagement of employees requires ongoing, real-time communication.
It starts with something small, inexpensive, and surprisingly difficult—a kind word. Many studies have shown that the value of a kind word, especially when said in real-time, is much higher than any gift voucher given as part of an “employee of the month” process. But it doesn’t stop there. Real-time feedback also includes addressing what didn’t work, identifying gaps, and finding ways to improve.
We remember our legendary managers because they truly saw us, for better or worse. They knew how to push us out of our comfort zones, challenge us, explain when we didn’t meet expectations, and how to improve. They were proud of us when things went well.
In the era of the new normal after the pandemic, this connection also includes learning to manage without being in the same physical space. It means closing loops, communicating expectations, raising flags, and developing the managerial tools to do all this remotely.
At the end of the day, the motivational paycheck is not really a mystery. If you’ve ever experienced truly suffering at work—long, dragging days, an unsupportive manager, lack of connection with colleagues, and boring tasks—you already know that salary isn’t everything. And you know what you would give up to change that.
