Those, who look through job ads more often are well aware of the cliché that begins in such writings: “A successful (fast-growing) company is looking for you”.
However, it turned out that at least Lithuanian jobs ads need to emphasize other things and start them, for example, as follows: “A company that puts great importance on treating employees honestly always and everywhere is looking for you”.
69 per cent of people expect an organisation to fairly treat its employees. This is evidenced by a study on Lithuanian employee engagement and employer’s characteristics, presented to Lithuania by the market research and consulting company Kantar, the digital creativity agency bigNow and the communication agency INK agency.
When choosing an ideal employer, the “Successful, growing” have only received votes from the 33 per cent of the interviewed and was found in fifth place. More votes than this feature were collected by “Taking responsibility for his/her actions” (43 per cent), “Offering career opportunities” (42 per cent) and “Reliable” (38 per cent).
What is interesting, is that at the end of the list the features that have usually been used to emphasize the quality of the workplace are lagging behind: “International” (6 per cent), “Prestigious” (4 per cent).
The study did not deny what is known – employees need good salaries, working conditions and the career itself. It goes without saying that people need to eat, feed their children and have sufficient funds for a comfortable life and meaningful leisure time.
For 70 per cent of study participants work is primarily a source of income, however, only 24 per cent of respondents said that work is ONLY a source of income and nothing else.
Nothing really new – employers need to pay for market conditions and employee-motivating salary, although, it is not enough when competing for employees, especially talents, i.e. those who can choose.
Of course, it is possible to compete with the money and get involved into a rat race, where every additional euro has less impact in motivating the employees and the profitability of the business that got caught in such a race is falling rapidly.
So what do people need besides money? Here are the directions for those companies and organisations which are thinking about ways that would help to keep and attract employees:
For 43 per cent of people work is also self-realization;
For 39 per cent work also includes being with people, communicating;
For 29 per cent work is an opportunity to create something useful to others, the society.
Self-realization, communication and opportunity to help the society – these aspects of work meaning are common and quite usual. However, the motive of “honesty” may surprise you, because the business world rarely speaks about such category, they usually use “transparency”, “partnership” and similar terms that are also used to describe relationships with clients and business partners.
Nevertheless, you quickly realise that there are two fundamental explanations for “honesty”: historical and social-psychological.
It is known that Lithuanian business is young – a rare company counts more than 20 years of history. In business, it is always needed to fight for your own interests, but the first year is the hardest one. At the end of the 20th century, in Lithuania, as in all the other states that have escaped from the Soviet Union, the business environment was like the Wild West and the business acted like cowboys: whoever is stronger, that one is right. Employees are always the weaker side and this is the reason why some employers did not bother to treat them honestly. This is also evidenced by the study: this employer’s feature is only important to 59 per cent of respondents up to 29 years of age, and important to 75 per cent of those, who are over 60 years old – in the Wild West they were at the peak of their career.
The second explanation relates to the fact that we, Homo sapiens, are social animals and the relationships with others are relevant to us. Justice is very important for our well-being, as well as the social aspect – how we are treated, whether someone lives using us, and etc.
It seems that it is needed to forestall and say that I am not talking about business becoming a charity organisation that gives out salaries and other goods for free. Employees need to be treated as equals, their opinion respected, they should be consulted with and the promises kept.
Remember that 43 per cent of respondents agreed with the paragraph: “Taking responsibility for their own actions” – it is a good example that the employer, and especially his/her supervisor, must bravely acknowledge his/her mistakes, take responsibility and not hide behind the backs of others or blame the subordinates.
These are psychological things that can be of great benefit to an organisation and raise it to a completely different level.