Posted by
Dave Kooker on Monday, April 28, 2008 11:11:02 AM
I understand what private business is attempting to do by hiring personal on a salary. Placing a constant pay structure makes it easier to control salary expenses and to estimate future projections for profit and loss. Even though the salary concept makes the accountant’s life easier, I wonder if the salary concept has more insidious effects on the human consciousness. I have see more and more individuals hired not as hourly but as salary in the past decade. I continuously see more bad attitudes evolve from the work force.
When an employee is hired as hourly or by production piece-meal, the employee is rewarded by the amount of effort placed into their task/job. A human’s need to achieve more is directly obtained by simply placing more effort into their task/job. Fewer supervisors are required because everyone is too concerned about their own goals since rewards are directly proportional to the amount of effort into their task/job.
When an individual is hired as salary, the relationship of effort placed into their task/job and the reward of achievement is vastly separated. All the employee can look forward to is a minuscule annual salary rate increase or a hypothetical annual bonus. Quickly employees realize they are rewarded the same if the effort is mediocre or stellar so mediocrity begins to prevail around the work environment. More management is hired to keep the employees motivated and extra effort is required to monitor employee production. Employee ‘A’ slows down and/or makes excuses why they should be excused from work to take care of a family issue and transfers the task to Employee ‘B’. Both employees are paid the same. These games are played everyday.
The frustration of the salaried employee originating by the separated cause & effect of effort and reward causes employees to spite others who may be compensated at a higher salary rate. Newer employees are always hired at a higher salary rate because the older workers are locked in at an earlier salary rate plus the minuscule annual salary rate increase(s). Those who have acquired an internal promotion, the job title is downgraded to deflect the upward mobility. How many companies now title their employees team members and team lead versus employee and manager?
There is another variable to this equation. Those individuals who possess higher education credentials and certifications are extra sensitive to others who have achieved more than those who do not possess higher education credentials and certifications. Somehow they believe they are due higher corporate rewards and have virulent animosity toward those who do not possess higher education credentials and certifications. An obvious example is a PhD. tenured college professor lecturing with bitterness about CEO pay levels.
I believe this frustration of the salaried middle class and the upper class also trickles over into their voting habits. I also think that elected officials have been very successful into tapping into that frustration. You can observe this in the voting demographics for Barack Hussein Obama; young, educated, white-collar employees. If they are not at the level they believe they deserve, no one else should be there either. I am astonished on how many taxpayer voters are so concerned of other’s financial compensation and how can their financial responsibilities be passed onto another through government legislation. They are willing to promote legislation to further government legislation to limit their own rewards if it also limits compensation and achievement of others.
America may be well served to return compensation to the employee by basing compensation by the hour or by production piece-meal. The America productivity will increase and eliminate this obsession of the other worker’s achievement.
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