Increasingly, employees say they want their work to matter. But why are job candidates willing to accept less pay for meaningful work?
It’s the age-old tradeoff when it comes to a job: do you do it for the pay or for the purpose?
But what’s obscured by that question is a real explanation of what’s going on ― that is, why do purpose-driven jobs so often seem to pay less than others?
New research is trying to get to the bottom of that and argues that pay disparity is often baked in at the negotiating table. In a new paper, titled Pay Suppression in Social Impact Contexts: How Framing Work Around the Greater Good Inhibits Job Candidate Compensation Demands, its authors noted that the data points to the candidates themselves.
“Past research suggests that when organizations communicate the benefits of their work for human welfare ― that is, use a social impact framing for work ― job candidates are willing to accept lower wages because they expect the work to be personally meaningful,” they wrote.
But the authors look at it from the other way: what if it’s the candidates themselves not pushing for more?
“This explanation overlooks a less socially desirable mechanism by which social impact framing leads to lower compensation demands: the perception among job candidates that requesting higher pay will breach organizational expectations to value work for its intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) rewards, or constitute a motivational norm violation,” they wrote.
In other words, summarizes Bloomberg writer Matthew Boyle, “jobseekers applying to firms that tout their do-gooder status refrain from negotiating for higher salaries, but not solely because they’ll trade pay for purpose…they’re also scared of [committing] a cultural faux-pas.”
A candidate for a purpose-driven job may not want to ask for more money, said Boyle, lest their potential employer question their motivations, but in the process they give that employer a chance to gain the upper hand in negotiation.
That could be an important insight for both sides of the negotiation, as purpose-driven work is all the rage these days. The more companies tout their own “purpose,” the harder it might feel to negotiate a fairer salary for yourself.
If you’re a jobseeker anywhere near the non-profit or social organization world, it’s probably a smart thing to keep in mind next time you’re asking for a raise.
Content written by Kieran Delamont for Worklife, a partnership between Ahria Consulting and London Inc. To view this content in newsletter form, click here.