Understanding work, your own included

Meals, transport, health cover, equipment: part of remuneration does not pass through the payslip. Its tax treatment explains much of its shape.

Symbolic recognition schemes are cheap and widely deployed. Available experiments find real and short-lived effects.

A bonus tied to a group's result dilutes the link between individual effort and gain. Theory predicts it does not work; the data are more nuanced.

A firm may have an interest in paying more than necessary. The theory is old, and empirical tests give mixed results.

Absenteeism is measured everywhere, presenteeism almost nowhere. Available estimates nonetheless suggest a cost of the same order.

The claim that a small share of employees is engaged has circulated for twenty years. It comes from a private instrument whose method is not fully public.

Exit interviews ask people who are leaving why they are leaving. It is the least reliable method in the repertoire, and the most used.

A 1963 theory holds that pay is only judged relative to that of others. Sixty years of work have specified which others.

Several countries have legislated, and a few natural situations have allowed measurement. The effects run in several directions at once.

Herzberg argued that satisfaction and dissatisfaction have distinct causes. The criticism concerns the method that produced that result.

The figure is everywhere in management training. It appears in none of his writings, and the theory it illustrates has never been validated.