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One of the highest paid people at my workplace, doesn't do CRAP. Everyone does his work for him - not the work he delegates, not the team or office-related work that all of us are supposed to do, no. He ignores HIS PRECISE responsibilities. So the answer to the question is "no." That is an aberration and obviously a highly emotional point for you based on how you wrote the above.
In my experience productivity comes from pride in the work and healthy competition among colleagues for the sake of doing a better job. It's cultural, not financial. Of course we always want more money.
If you want productivity, money is part of it, but what's more important are psychological rewards. Recognition, etc.. They money is more of a lagging indicator. It's like Napoleon said when giving out medals, "by such trinkets are men led." A piece of ribbon on a person's chest can be worth more than cash. It needs to be wrapped up in pride for their work, a sense of importance, a sense that what they do matters and a culture in the workplace that's about continual improvement. The workers should want to do an even better job next time.
In my experience, people will work harder, faster and better when there's a respect/pride factor in play. Offering money will motivate people, but it's only about half as effective. You don't want to pay people less than what they're worth, but you also don't need to go overboard with money to get people to do a good job. If money is all you offer, then you get a mercenary attitude in your workplace. Mercenary types have no loyalty and will backstab everyone around them for some extra cash. That is NOT what you want, it will cause any organization to fall apart if people spend their time trying to screw their colleagues.
This is true at any workplace, whether it's a fast-food place or Google. We've all been to McDonald's and we've all seen the difference between a well-run McDonald's franchise and bad one even though I bet the pay is similar at all of them. It depends on the owner and management's attitude which trickles down.
An example of this in my area would be Dutch Brother's coffee. Their coffee is no better than Starbucks or Dunkin or whatever, but the attitude their workers have is what keeps me coming back. They're paid about the same as most coffee shops too although I think they do some more generous profit share for the employees than other similar chains. So there is financial incentive to do a good job, but more importantly there is a strong peer pressure and pride factor involved.
Another example would be WalMart vs. Target. They pay similar, but WalMart's attidude and culture is just much worse. Whenever I go to Target, once the lines start to queue up at the checkout, a manager starts directing customers to alternate checkouts and calls for more cashiers. At WalMart they don't give a crap so it's no wonder their employees don't care either.
The remainder is often discussed in Business School, it is a multi-prong approach but the subject of the thread is wages and productivity. The answer is of course yes as has been shown in studies and employers do pay well for skills which are in demand. The Elite are motivated because they are the elite and high wages are part of the portfolio of being the Elite. Now common skill set or lower tier jobs are considered dispensible and so treated unless one as an unusually humanistic employer.
The remainder is often discussed in Business School, it is a multi-prong approach but the subject of the thread is wages and productivity. The answer is of course yes as has been shown in studies and employers do pay well for skills which are in demand. The Elite are motivated because they are the elite and high wages are part of the portfolio of being the Elite. Now common skill set or lower tier jobs are considered dispensible and so treated unless one as an unusually humanistic employer.
I didn't go to B-school but treating people with respect seems like an intuitive truism. Respect for the work itself also seems to be a big factor in the workplaces I've been in. When people respect and value what they're doing, they strive for excellence even when their pay is not that great. That was true even when I was kid working fast-food type jobs. The best managers made us feel like what we were doing was important & made a HUGE point to make sure any customer affirmations were heard by all of us. The pay was the same as any fast food joint.
I later worked at Wal-Mart and the atmosphere was terrible. No one gave a damn about the quality of their work there, from top to bottom. It was all a focus on quantity, stats and benchmarks. Do this by X time, do that every Y minutes, do Z if sales fall below T level, etc...
I work now in academia now where the currency is definitely not money. Without a doubt it's respect, from colleagues and students. You could probably cut the pay of a lot of people in education but they'd still do it, the "love" and psychological factor is that strong. Of course we argue for more pay, though. There are other workplaces like that, where the "quality of experience" is worth more than, say, an extra $10K a year, especially in more creative pursuits where paying someone to work "harder" will not exactly produce results.
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One of the highest paid people at my workplace, doesn't do CRAP. Everyone does his work for him - not the work he delegates, not the team or office-related work that all of us are supposed to do, no. He ignores HIS PRECISE responsibilities. So the answer to the question is "no." That is an aberration and obviously a highly emotional point for you based on how you wrote the above.
Let's just say there is someone I work with who is in a high position and does nothing. The problem is his respect level, or lack of it rather, not his place on the salary scale which is higher than most of us.
People throughout any organization's hierarchy that do nothing, or focus on the "non-productive" are not an aberration, they are a persistent fact of life. After 35 years working for large, well-known corporations, I can assure you of this. My observation is that they tend to exist more in mid-level, than at the bottom. A primary reason could be that the folks at the bottom tiers are closely monitored and dogged if they are not hustling. Mid-level managers waste inordinate amounts of time and effort on meetings and reporting on other people's efforts. Many of them see the amount of hours they put in (often accomplishing nothing), as more important than the impact their efforts have on operations, productivity or revenues.
It might. A company usually has good and not so good workers. If they have to pay higher wages, the not so good might wind up no earning their keep. So the company might let them go. As a result, they'd be left with a higher proportion of good workers, i.e., more productive workers.
So higher workers might increase work place productivity. It might help increase productivity also by stimulating the company to increase automation.
Higher wages can result in higher productivity or simply pride in one's place of work in SOME PEOPLE but there are always those who will get away with whatever they can and 'milk' the attainment rates because we all know the more you do, the more corporations want.
On the other end of the scale there are those who always bust their butt off all the time because they are bored otherwise or just want to be a superstar, pushing the attainment rates higher and these two tend to clash.
Overall I would say low wages probably do not encourage harder work in myself, unfortunately.. I am flexible and just do what is expected in the line I work at, trying to get the best wage I can.. if I can get away with longer breaks, I will.... hey I'm being honest here. I'm not one to sit around and talk though either... but I won't work at a job that basically has no breaks and a 12 hour shift.. I'm not a prideful workaholic or someone known as a "live to work" type.
I would say incentive based pay would increase productivity more... assuming you get a good bonus for your efforts and not some meal ticket or token item or something but a real, 25%+ increase in take home pay for greatly exceeding goals... of course this can come at the expense of quality so a balance must be struck...
One argument I hear in favor of higher minimum wages is that they increase productivity at the workplace. While I am a minimum wage worker I am not so sure about this. I do believe that higher wages probably increase willingness to work for longer to make more money, but working longer is not the same as working better.
This just sounds like a cheap excuse to demand pay raises, honestly. Do you believe a higher wage increases productivity at the workplace? Explain your case whatever your standing.
Hakkarin, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage rate bolsters that of all other USA wages and salaries; but the extent of its effect is inverse to job pay scales amounts; (i.e. the minimum rate has a greater proportional effect upon lesser and a lesser effect upon higher wages.
The general increases of all labor costs due to increases of the federal minimum wage rate increases motivation to seek reductions of labor costs per units of products. Reductions of labor costs per units of production and increased purchasing power of the median wage are both indications of economic improvement.
I’m a proponent of increasing the federal minimum wage rate and thereafter monitored and adjusting it annually to stay abreast with our cost-price index.
If I'm being paid very little, I'm likely going to do the bare minimum to keep my job. If I'm being paid better, I'm usually going to work harder.
Of course, this varies by individual. Some people will bust their butts no matter what they are being paid. Others are going to be lazy at any wage.
There is going to be some maximum level of productivity that a person will hit where they have maxed out their working capacity, and raising wages won't do anything about this.
Hakkarin, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage rate bolsters that of all other USA wages and salaries; but the extent of its effect is inverse to job pay scales amounts; (i.e. the minimum rate has a greater proportional effect upon lesser and a lesser effect upon higher wages.
The general increases of all labor costs due to increases of the federal minimum wage rate increases motivation to seek reductions of labor costs per units of products. Reductions of labor costs per units of production and increased purchasing power of the median wage are both indications of economic improvement.
I’m a proponent of increasing the federal minimum wage rate and thereafter monitored and adjusting it annually to stay abreast with our cost-price index.
Respectfully, Supposn
To whatever extent (as minimum wage rate opponents state), jobs are eliminated due to an increase of the federal minimum wage rate increases employers’ motivations to reduce their labor costs, our national experience has been (due to the minimum’s effect upon the median wage), a net increases of jobs and a net improved economy. (our middle income earners greatly affect our economy).
The point is not that higher wages automatically increase individual workers’ productivity but rather increasing the purchasing power of a nation’s median wage improves the nation’s economy which in turn promotes additional net increases of jobs and wages.
It is not mathematically possible to increase the purchasing power of the median wage rate unless we decrease the proportion of work workers earning less, or increase the proportion of earning more.
Increasing the federal minimum wage rate has never significantly reduced USA's numbers of lower paying jobs in the short term but it has always bolstered our median wage.
Respectfully, Supposn
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