Archive for the 'Research' Category

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There are lots of reasons why loving your job makes you a happier person. But did you know that job satisfaction also makes your marriage happier?

That’s one of the surprising findings from my landmark Early Years of Marriage (EYM) project, the NIH-funded study that has been following and observing hundreds of married couples for nearly a quarter century. The longest-running marriage study ever conducted, EYM set out to discover what makes marriages happy, strong, and long lasting–and what breaks them apart.

While other research has shown that job dissatisfaction can lead to unhappiness at home, this new finding, which correlates job happiness with marital happiness, is the first research to emphasize the positive spillover from work to marriage.

It makes sense that if you’re happier at work, you’re more likely to be happy at home too. When we asked the working married couples in my EYM study about their work life, we found that those who felt appreciated, challenged, and energized by their jobs were also more likely to report being very happy in their marriages. These happy employees had good workplace relationships, were more or less content with their pay, felt motivated to develop new skills, and were productive, success-oriented, high-achievers.

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Archives for Research

We recognize the signs. A young employee shows up late at work or for meetings, misses assignments or takes sick days when they’re on top of their game.

As a boss your first instinct is to rattle their cage. But what will that accomplish?

Employers fret about holding onto Gen Y workers who may be less inclined than previous generations to stick around through thick and thin.  Given the cost of recruiting young talent, employers are understandably concerned about return on investment – keeping an employee long enough for them to develop into strong contributors.

Still, loyalty isn’t part of the “deal” any more between employers and employees, so it’s no surprise that, according to a new study by Taleo, an HR software company, 41% of those who are no longer working for their first employer out of college left in less than two years. That doesn’t strike me as an epidemic – a lot of first jobs simply aren’t good fits.

Taleo teamed with Harris Interactive to conduct a survey of 2,045 adults ages 18 and older, a series of questions about their first jobs and first employers.

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Archives for Research

Most of us want to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with our work. But the vast majority of us aren’t what HR experts call “engaged” by our jobs.

What can we do about that? First, we can realize that this is a universal problem. A recently released study of 88,612 workforce members in 18 countries by Towers Perrin finds that only 21 percent of employees are engaged in their current work. In fact, 38 percent of workers feel partly to fully disengaged.

Does this sound like the weather report for your cube? Patchy clouds of engagement, followed by chilly co-workers, and a chance of hot air from your boss.

The litmus test goes like this: If you care about the future of the company and are willing to make a discretionary effort, then it’s likely you are engaged. Translation: You’re willing to work 65 hours a week because you like your job and you like your company.

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Archives for Research

International human resource managers have long struggled to articulate the return on investment for expatriate costs.

Smart HR managers will be sure to highlight the findings of a recent study by Dr. Michael Dickmann in their next presentation on expat ROI. (Companies spend an average of $311,000 a year on each expatriate.)

An academic authority on expatriate management, Dickmann runs the Centre for Research into the Management of Expatriation (CReME) at the Cranfield School of Business in England.

His study, conducted in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that productivity jumps while the employee is on assignment, stabilizes when he or she returns and then increases again.

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Archives for Research

Firstborns feel family pressure to excel and science backs it up: birth order is an important driver of career choices. What is less well understood is the role of birth order and intelligence – at least in my family.

Birth order might sound a bit farfetched for a science or careers topic, like astrology, biorhythms or a fad pizza diet, but it’s not. A Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Services study published in Science shows that firstborns of either sex are, on average, 2.3 IQ points smarter than their younger sibs.

Those several IQ points make an enormous difference when it comes to getting into college and ultimately advancing in life, contends Dr. Frank Sulloway, author of Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives. Sulloway, who commented on the study in the New York Times and in this month’s Science (fees, registration required), says, “There’s some evidence to suggest that first and later-borns go into different kinds of careers and have associated different motivations.”

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Archives for Research

What do you look for in a good corporate careers site? Good jobs, certainly. A design that’s easy to navigate? Information about what it’s like to work at the company?

Most companies forget that last point or possibly they don’t know where to start.

Deutsche Bank delivered on all of the above when it created several Web-based videos of employees talking about why they work there.

And having checked it out, I can see why Deutsche Bank was proclaimed the best corporate careers site by a group of students, recent graduates and Swedish researchers.

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Archives for Research

Here are three telling data points which, when properly assembled, paint an unflattering picture about working in America today:

• The wealthiest 1 percent sees their income dramatically outpace others;
• Men in their 30s today earn less than their fathers did in the 1970s;
• A parents’ economic success is one of the biggest pointers to their children’s future economic success.

Those are key findings of a study that evaluates economic mobility, or the ability of a person to move up or down the economic ladder within a lifetime or from one generation to the next.

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