So, either it’s time for you to look for a new job, or you’re looking for new mainframe staff where you work. The question is this: what are the most important characteristics about the new job that you should be looking for, or that you should be offering?
The obvious answer, I guess, is salary. How much does the job pay? That’s usually the biggest criteria. If it doesn’t pay enough, or just more than you’re getting now, then there’s no point applying for it. However, research has found that a higher salary doesn’t make you happier – or not very much happier. The truth is that at the start of your career money is important because you need to pay for things. But once you get enough money to pay the rent/mortgage, food, clothes, holiday, and a bit to spare, then an increase brings less happiness than you might expect. And by the time that you need a pay rise to pay for your second yacht, the increase in pay brings almost no increase in happiness at all.
The second big thing that people like is a good job title. They like to be a senior something, or principal something. Vice-president of something is also pretty good. But really, in most companies, the person who is doing most of the work is the person who doesn’t really have a job title. They are the people who are keeping the company going – without whom, business wouldn’t be as successful as it is. In my experience, people with very long job titles tended to be the most ineffectual at their job. Following the Peter Principle, they had been promoted above their level of competence and were now transferred sideways into a role where they could do little harm. If people are impressed by job titles, they are probably not the sort of people you want working on your mainframe!
So, what should you be looking for in your new job, or what should be near the top of your advert? One answer is work-life balance. Being able to get home to see your child’s performance in the school play, or watch them playing in the school football team is very important for them. So, it’s important for you to be able to schedule your working day around those events. Find a job where you can take a couple of hours off in the afternoon and make up the time in the evening. You’ll be amazed at how much happier you and your family will be.
Training or CPDs are important. How often at conferences did you hear people say that they could only attend for one day because there was no money in the budget for an overnight stay, or to pay for them to attend for all three days. It’s true that there are lots of brilliant online training courses available, but there’s something extra you can get from attending in person for a training course – and I don’t mean the beer that gets drunk in the bar in the evening! Staying up-to-date with the latest mainframe technologies is a very important part of job satisfaction. And finding out what other mainframe sites are doing or planning to do is important too.
Health is important to a person’s happiness. You need to ensure that your new job values your (and your family’s health). So, if you do need some kind of treatment, it is accepted as part of what happens to people in your job.
And that leads on to culture. There was a time, many years ago, when the mainframe employees – operators, systems programmers, DBAs, etc – didn’t really know which company they worked for, they just knew that they worked in IT. For them, they could change to a similar job at a different company, and it would hardly make any difference to them. Hopefully that’s not the case anymore. A company’s culture can be hard to define in words – although most companies do document what they believe/hope their culture is – but employees know whether they like to work there and whether they’d recommend it to their friends. Or whether they simply work there because it pays them and it’s not too far away.
In fact, commute time is one of the biggest things for how happy people are with their job. And, of course, commute time is not just about the distance travelled. If you can get to work in 20 minutes or under, you have the perfect job for commute time. As your commute time increases, this reduces a person’s happiness with their job. This may change as more-and-more people work from home or work from anywhere because the commute into the office may only occur once a week or couple of times a month once the pandemic is over.
Increasingly, people are concerned about how ‘green’ they and the company they work for are. Is this new organization you’re looking to work for carbon neutral? Does it offer hybrid cars for staff to use? Does it have charging points in the car park for staff? And there are many other related questions that can be asked. If the company believes global warming is a myth, is this a company with much of a future. And it’s the same with your current company when you advertise a job. What’s it’s carbon footprint like?
Basically, there’s a lot more to look for when searching for a new job or when recruiting than just salary and job title. So, it’s worth keeping an eye out for these other factors that can make you happy – and make your mainframe staff happy.
Find out more about iTech-Ed Ltd here.
No comments:
Post a Comment