Vocabulary

20

UNIT II. JOB SATISFACTION

Topics for discussion:

1.“Happiness is having one’s passion for one’s profession”. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

2.Satisfying and dissatisfying factors at work. What might you change the job?

3.Perks and fringe benefits – meanings, examples.

4.Job titles – are they of any importance?

Ex. 1. Read the text and think about factors that make people happy and unhappy at work. Use the key words in thick print. Discuss the statement written by Stendhal.

“Happiness is having one’s passion for one’s profession” wrote the French novelist (and management thinker) Stendhal. The number of people in this fortunate position is limited, but there are all sorts of aspects of office and factory work that can make it enjoyable. It was founded that things such as salary and working conditions are not in themselves enough to make employees satisfied with their work, but that they can cause dissatisfaction if they are not good enough. Relations with colleagues can be satisfying and congenial. People may find great pleasure in working in a team. Conversely, bad relations with colleagues can be extremely unpleasant, and lead to great dissatisfaction and distress. Where some employees may like being given responsibilities, for others it is a source of stress. People talk more about the need for work that gives them quality of life, the work-life balance and the avoidance of stress. Others argue that challenge involves a reasonable and inevitable degree of stress if people are to have the feeling of achievement, a necessary outcome of work if it is to give satisfaction. They complain that a stress industry is emerging, with its stress counselors and stress therapists, when levels are in reality no higher today than they were before.

Ex. 2. Which of the following would motivate you to work harder? Choose your top five and rank them in order of priority. Explain your choice.

Ex. 3. In groups discuss the following questions.

1.A recent US survey showed children preferred parents to go out and earn money rather than spend more time with them. What does this show in your opinion?

2.Would you prefer a male or female boss? Why?

3.For what reason might you change jobs? How often would you do so in your life?

23

Is There a Place for Time in Corporate Utopia?

Employees in SAS Institute live in a workers’ Utopia. On the company’s wooden campus in North Carolina is everything a person could need: doctors, dentists, on-site childcare, masseurs…

SAS has just been chosen by Fortune magazine as one of the best companies to work for in the US. Like the other 99 companies singled out, SAS is not content to reward employees with a mere pay cheque. Instead, the company is dead set on making their lives easier.

Indeed, there is little these good employers will not do to take the load off their workers’ shoulders. Some provide subsidized housekeeper. Some deliver readycooked gourmet meals to employees’ doors in the evening. Other offer haircuts, free Viagra, cut-price sushi, free ergonomic chairs. One company even provides $10,000 towards the cost of adopting a child.

Not content with above, some employers are helping their staff fill their leisure hours too. Many offer swimming pools and fitness centres, some arrange guitar lessons or provide garden allotments. Some even lay on company holidays, whisking workers and their partners off to luxury island locations.

And that is not all: some companies also set the standards for employees to follow in their private lives. At First Tennessee, employees get a $130 cash bonus if they are seen to be practicing 10 specified healthy behaviour patterns.

For these forward-looking employers the vexed problem of work/life balance – assumed to be one of the greatest workplace issues facing us – is magically eliminated. These companies are mounting a take-over bid for their employees’ lives with the result that the issue of balance no longer arises.

And at these companies hardly anyone ever leaves. Which might mean everyone is gloriously happy. Or it might mean the prospect of severing one’s entire life from an employer is so daunting that it seems easier to stay put.

Amid all this bounty there is just one thing that none of these companies offer. And that is time. If employers really want to show that they are helping employees balance their lives, the answer is not to do their shopping, fix their teeth and issue them with laptops so that they can work “flexibly” right through the night. It is to ensure that people do not work too hard. To write it into the company’s culture that no one will be expected to work more than, say, 40 hours a week on average. And for the Chief Executive to show the way.

Certainly this would not be easy and probably not cheap either. But an employer that tackled the long-hours culture would be reaching the parts that all the free hairdos, Viagra and guitar lessons in the world will never reach.

Answer these questions about the article.

1.How can employees at First Tennessee earn $130? What do you think they have to do to earn this money?

2.What is the problem of work/life balance? How are companies in the article trying to solve the problem? Have they been successful?