1. Present yourself and what you do at Metabroadcast.
My name is Rita Lopes and I’m all about getting people to where they want to be while sharpening their skills and tools to become their best selves!
I’m currently pursuing a PhD in Organisational Psychology at UCL on the topic of Happiness in the workplace, where I’ll be creating a tool to measure people’s happiness at work over time and contribute to the understanding of how that affects productivity, and the work being done by them. Simultaneously, I’m MetaBroadcast’s Happiness Lead and I’ve been with the company for roughly 5 years now.
My goal is to help people understand what makes them tick, and how to do more of that and less of what doesn’t. I love helping people achieve the best version of themselves, their goals and do more of what makes them happy — a job and/or a career path shouldn’t hinder any of it; on the contrary, it should contribute to what it is that matters to them. I do a lot of coaching, mentoring, training, and consulting in various areas. At MetaBroadcast I work closely and personally with the entire team, from the most recent hires to those who have worked with us for a while, including leadership positions.
2. Do you think salary affects motivation? In what way?
Yes, to an extent. But perhaps not in the way some people think about it. Salary is a key thing to nail down and get right because if it isn’t, people won’t be able to consider other possibly more important topics such as the quality of the work they’re producing, or how they fit within the company so that it becomes the best relationship possible.
It’s often useful to think about this in the same way we think about our homes. If you can’t get your heating or boiler to work properly after multiple attempts of fixing it (whether they were the best approaches or not) you’re highly unlikely to consider what’s the best decoration for that wall in your living room. And if the heating situation persists, you’re more likely to give up and find a “better place”, than to continue what feels like a permanently up-hill battle.
It’s the same reasoning around salary. If you feel you’re underpaid, you won’t be available to consider “higher goals” and you’ll be more sensitive to what could otherwise be seen as a non-issue.
If salaries are done right, they become a non-issue themselves and people are willing and able to focus on doing more and better work. With the salary appropriately matching expectations, people feel valued (and valuable) and are much more willing to go the extra mile — not because of the money per se (it has been shown by research that for salaries over 75k/year, there’s little to no difference), but because of what it means to them to be valued and appreciated.
3. Do you have any examples of this in your workplace? For example, Have you seen higher salaries being reflected on higher performance or even decrease of one’s performance?
Yes, although it wouldn’t be right to say salary is the only factor affecting performance.With that being said, our salary reviews are based on performance (which is more than simply productivity or mere work output), so better performances usually both lead to and come from higher pays.
4. Did you ever have anyone leaving or deciding not to accept a job at your company because of the proposed salary? How did you manage that?
Yes, although not that often. It is a normal situation for all companies because it’s highly variable based on each individual’s expectations, experience, background, etc. Knowing this, it’s important to use the recruiting process to assess not only skills and competencies but also to align the candidate and the company on all issues that will matter — including salary expectations and what the company is ready to offer. If it’s not a good fit, it’s best to know right away than to go through with the wrong hire.
I find honesty and openness to be really important in these matters and the best way to manage an issue that is sensitive to most people. If one or both of the parties feels the salary isn’t competitive enough, I can’t stress the importance of respecting the proposed views — sometimes it may lead to a successful negotiation, sometimes not, but it is an essentially humane issue as it affects the jobseeker’s quality of life going forward.
5. Have you noticed generational differences regarding the importance one gives to the salary?
Yes, absolutely. Whether it’s out of sheer necessity (paying the bills, helping the family, or any of a variety of scenarios) or out of a desire to maintain a certain status quo they’ve gotten used to, different generations deal with careers and salaries very differently.
Most of us have been in conversations with older relatives where they’re more risk-averse (on average) than us. And perhaps we even know younger workers who think of work and salary in a more flexible way than we do.
Our parents’ generations were born in the post-WWII era, where calmness and stability were aspects they longed for and strived to achieve — with good reason! Thus, it’s no surprise that those generations saw their income as the main source of their families stability, perhaps even enduring less than ideal workplaces or careers they weren’t crazy for. Our generation, though, was born on the back of their rebuilding and stability, and the flowered-hippies revolution where well-being was gaining pace on stability and security. It allowed us to focus on big dreams and bigger ideas, and instead of living for work, like some of our parents’ generation, we work to live the life we want.
6. a) Do you have a non-financial rewards system you believe works better than salary increases to boost people’s happiness? What is it?
We have a variety of policies and procedures that are meant to contribute to happiness in the workplace but we don’t see these as separate from each other or salary. We believe that all we do is interconnected, and in some way affects the overall happiness — we cannot exclude salary, but we certainly aim to provide some additional benefits and alternatives.
To mention only a few examples, we have an extra 15 days of optional annual leave at half pay for anyone and everyone who may want the extra days, giving everyone the possibility to take 8 weeks of holiday per year! We also celebrate everyone’s anniversaries of joining the company (instead of birthdays as we feel those should be up to each of us to determine if we want to do something with the company) with a proper party for everyone (bubbly, cake and games included!).
The team also goes on Away Days every quarter for a full day out of the office (plus a full day Christmas party!) doing some cool activities (a surprise until the very last moment!) and they are never repeated, so you can’t possibly know what next time will hold! But it’s also about smaller things for us — working from home, or getting together around the table for lunch every Friday, talking to each other and enjoying a meal together; the company provides for this lunch we call Foodie Friday and the dishes we have are chosen individually but from the restaurant one of the team members chose for that week.
6. b) In your opinion, what is the best driver of happiness: incremental salary bumps or the occasional performance-driven bonus?
Let’s say that happiness can be seen to have two different aspects to it:
First, we all have our own “usual level of long-term happiness” (/unhappiness) that is a result of our entire lives, experiences (good and bad), and memories that make us who we are. This is more or less stable over time because it’s built over our whole existence. It will increase or decrease over time, based on what we experience, but more gradually and slowly than the other aspect of happiness:
Secondly, we can boost our happiness (or have “shocks” to it) that cause severe increases or decreases at any given moment, due to specific events or experiences we’re exposed to. If happiness was a steady horizontal line over time, these bumps would be represented as occasional high peaks or low depressions.
However, these are transient effects that will eventually average themselves out down/up to our “usual level of long-term happiness” mentioned before.
Incremental salary bumps tie into the long-term “usual level” of happiness each of us has, because it’s a change that is lasting and won’t disappear after a certain amount of time.
Occasional performance-driven bonuses are usually offered sporadically which means they render a temporary happiness boost, so the increase in happiness levels will quickly come back down to the “usual level”. If these are the only happiness drivers used, then they would have to be constant because the benefits they produce are short-lived.
A combination of both of these options is the most commonly used approach because it taps both aspects of happiness and produces a more balanced and easier to maintain approach. There are exceptions, of course, with many companies opting for lower based salaries in favour of very high and frequent performance-driven bonuses.
In my opinion, both can work nicely depending on context and people’s priorities and interests.
7. Could you name 3 non-salary related activities you believe are crucial for employee happiness that your company does?
- We encourage everyone to think about and work on themselves. They would work primarily with me, and we discuss any and all aspects that are relevant to them — not all of which are work related — and we agree on plans and actions to get them to their goals.
- Flexible working conditions, including no schedules and the possibility of working from home/remotely without missing out on the day’s important information.
- Cake all the time! 🙂 No, really.
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