Security instead of risk: According to a survey by the management consultancy Ernst & Young, the public sector is the most attractive sector for German students. The main reason for this is the hope of finding a secure job.
Job security with a good work-life balance
Classic factors of employee motivation continue to play an important role. A new study shows that every second employee attaches great importance to a secure job. However, only around a third of those surveyed are willing to make sacrifices for this.
Job security is an important motivating factor for every second employee: 52 percent of women and 58 percent of men attach great importance to it, according to the results of the study “The future of work: A journey to 2022”. For the study, the consulting company PWC asked around 2,000 employees in Germany about their ideas about the future of work, 46 percent of whom were male and 54 percent female.
According to the study, however, only around a third of those surveyed are willing to sacrifice their work-life balance for a secure job: 36 percent of the male and only 32 percent of the female respondents say they would be permanent for the prospect of a secure job available to your employer.
Not climate protection
How important is sustainability in the workplace to people? The Bertelsmann Foundation had this examined and found out something amazing: The younger employees are, the more important they are about classic values such as job security, salary and collegiality. Environmental and climate protection, on the other hand, play a rather subordinate role.
Young workers in Germany take a more pragmatic view of their jobs than is often assumed. In a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, for which 1,200 employees from various sectors were asked about what they considered to be the most important aspects of their work and their employer, 18 to 24-year-olds named job security most frequently, followed by salary and collegiality.
Working hours. Holidays. And more.
A key issue for many workers is flexible working time in order to have a work-life balance. Negotiating a work/life balance can help enable parents (both men and women) to reconcile their work with their family lives and women in particular to participate in the labour market.
Finding the right work-life balance can allow workers to take leave from work so that they can participate in education or training or take up an interest, hobby or leisure pursuit. This may mean that employees can reorganise their working lives and hours around shorter days, weeks, months or years.
German families tend to be small with only one or two children. The men are still quite often considered to be the head of the household, even though both the wife and husband work.
Do Germans really have work-life balance?
It’s common to hear that Germans are great at switching off once their working hours are done, but according to a new survey, this may not be entirely true.
The survey commissioned by Novotel surveyed around 5,000 adults across Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Poland to investigate their habits and working schedules. Surprisingly enough, it found that the Germans have the worst work-life balance of all four countries, with 58 percent work and only 42 percent leisure time.
Germany: The discreet lives of the super rich
The rich in Germany been never been as well-off as they are today and assets have never been so unevenly distributed. But who are they? How do they live? And what do they think of their country?
A journey into the discreet world of the super-rich. One percent of Germans own over a quarter of the country’s assets, whilst half of the country’s citizens have no assets at all. But while the German media report on the growing poverty in the country on a daily basis, little is known about the super-rich. They keep a very low profile and can walk the streets unrecognized.
Salary is important but differently than you think
It is said that a salary increase should have little effect on motivation at work. Appreciation and more responsibility are the key. But that’s not entirely true – because salary does play a role in employee satisfaction.
Money alone does not bring happiness – this is the result of countless job studies that have examined how the level of salary affects the motivation of employees. Sometimes experts are looking for the ideal salary that makes people happy. Time examines how salary increases affect employee engagement. The answers that these studies give to the salary questions are similar: salary increases only have a minimal effect that quickly fizzles out over time. If you want to motivate employees or keep them in the company, you should use other means as a boss.
All of this may be true, but it is not the whole truth. “Money does not necessarily generate motivation, but if the payment is not right, demotivation can arise,” says psychology professor Maika Rawolle from the University of Media, Communication and Economics in Berlin to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. The unclear expression of “incorrect salary” is very correct, because there are some salary constellations that reduce motivation. Everyone agrees: It’s about injustice, that is, about a comparison.
Money is not everything
Do you want to pay your employees a bonus? Beware, this might not be a good idea: Studies show that extra money can hurt employee motivation and job satisfaction.
What is the ideal salary? Even if funds were unlimited, pinpointing the ideal salary would be difficult. The first intuition is: the higher the salary, the better the work results. But studies show that the connection between compensation, motivation and performance is much more complex. In fact, there is some evidence that people would not be happier in their jobs if they had control over their salary.
Subject Matter
Germans want to work in subject matter areas in line with their education, training and job experience. The goal is to deepen that expertise. The German economy, German companies, value the specialist more than the generalist.
Job Security
Job security is for Germans the most important motivating factor. Germans strive for stability and predictability. Many, perhaps most Germans, prefer to work for one employer, in one location, over their entire career.