My first boss…I just didn’t like his methods. I thought I was doing well …I got $1000—a 10 percent raise—and I was quite pleased…I thought I was doing much more than everybody else, I thought I was performing at a different level…and everyone came bouncing back with their raise and they all got $1000. So [the] raise that sort of pleased me at one point now irritated the hell out of me…And so I quit. I had a baby and no money. I borrowed $1000 bucks from my mother. I quit.
Guess who told this story? Why it’s Jack Welch in this article.
Which illustrates nicely that our satsifaction with our salaries depends not on absolute numbers but on the perceived fairness of that salary.
And of course, the best way to make salaries more fair, is to make them public inside the company.
Btw: Scientists have found the center in our brain that gives us our sense of fairness.
Ernie Zelinski emailed me a copy of his free e-book “1001 best things ever said about work” and I gotta say that that’s quite the quote collection.
The more I look the more blogs I find that talk about happiness at work. It seems like there’s a regular groundswell of interest in getting love your job – or getting a job you love.
I have yet another question for ya: What three tips would you give your boss? What would you like him or her to do, stop doing, change, say, not say?
Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten had 
