Money isn’t everything.  Direct cash outlays to the poor can make them psychologically worse off if those outlays are temporary.  In an experiment poor people were given $2000, $500 and $0 (control group).  Both groups getting the money were objectively better off having spent it on bills, food, clothing for kids, etc.

But, both were also subjectively worse off having felt more stress and anxiety than the $0 group.

What is the aim of your organization with its staff?  Pay them well or have them be psychologically fulfilled or both?  I expect 99% answered that rhetorical with “both”.

Both is great but if you had to choose, you’d be a heck of a lot better off focusing on their psychological well being.

An analysis of over 16,000 global workers showed that at all levels of income, the most important factors determining job satisfaction were interpersonal relationships and having an interesting job—each accounting for around 20 percent of the explainable variation. In contrast, pay explained only 4 percent of the variation in people’s job satisfaction.

That’s a 10 to 1 difference in favor of ‘soft and fuzzy’ over pay.

So, psychological satisfaction is 10 times more important to job satisfaction, which is highly predictive of churn.

Do you measure it?  The cliche of what gets measured, gets managed is often true.

Here is a McKinsey study showing job satisfaction via Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness.  [The other two – purpose and meaning – are not theory driven and pretty suspect]

• Competence is about training and a sense of progression to building expertise.  It’s about not feeling imposter syndrome and seeing how your work fits into the larger aim of the enterprise.
• Autonomy is not being micro-managed and having a leader who gives guidance, support and direction but free reign on how while fostering new thinking and a sense of staff control and choicefulness.
• Relatedness is what it sounds like – interpersonal connection but this can also be to the brand and mission, feeling a part of something.

There is a right way and countless wrong ways to measure these three. We know they are highly predictive of staff churn.  How do we know?

The last two rows are from our own data measuring job satisfaction with our canvassing staff (dvcanass.com) and the satisfaction with the signup process among new donors.

Frontline staff who deal directly with donors have a huge and direct impact on donor satisfaction via their own satisfaction.  It’s infectious, in both directions.

And what about your non-front line staff?  Well, staff turnover is costly and disruptive inside the organization.  Hard to imagine that doesn’t bleed through to your donors.

Regardless, the first step with staff and donors is to start measuring satisfaction in this three-dimensional way.  You can learn more about these measures and how the data is used to manage people and process in our learning session on Wednesday, 13th.  Register for free here.

Kevin