"Love Languages in Business" -Looking at Dan Price's offer

Recently, we have witnessed much discussion about the actions of CEO Dan Price of Gravity taking a massive pay cut to enable the increase the pay of his staff. Feedback has been wildly swinging from calling him a hero to calling him crazy. It is true that this act was more than just a boosting of his staff salaries. This was a very clear message about reducing the disparity between the CEO position and his staff, about being seen more as a "team". The message is "We are all in this together".

Dan Price (Image from Gravity Payments Facebook page)

Feedback on Dan Price's action has focussed a great deal on the socio-political implications more than it merely being an act of throwing money at his employees to boost their connection with the organization. Some have decried it as a socialist move that will go horribly wrong. What does the research say about the potential for this move to succeed?

 In 2014 TINYhr published a very revealing Employee Engagement and Organizational culture report with some interesting findings on the topic of worker satisfaction. It was a sizeable study with over 200,000 anonymous responses to the survey, giving it some credibility. You can read the results here at  http://www.tinyhr.com/2014-employee-engagement-organizational-culture-report. While I don't want to repeat everything they had to say in this study, it is worthwhile discussing the basic findings in relation to this audacious offer by Dan Price.

In summary, the survey showed that the number one motivator for employees was not money but relationship with peers or the camaraderie between employees. On the same track, only half of all employees who responded were satisfied with their supervisors and a telling two thirds of employees reported that the organization in which they worked lacked a strong culture. Only 21% of employees felt valued by their employers. The TINYhr report noted, their findings matched the worldwide Gallup poll that found that only 13% of employees were engaged in or felt connected to their work. It is true that the United States and Canada fared better in this survey but there were still a massive 72% of workers who were either not engaged or actively disengaged in their work. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx)

So when we put these findings together with what Dan Price has offered his employees, there are some unanswered questions as to whether his offer will produce the desired results. These are questions that need to be answered before other CEOs rush out there and make similar offers. What impact did Price's offer have on the culture within Gravity between employees and between management and staff? Do staff feel more valued and recognized as a result of this offer? Even if this has some impact, will this have a long-lasting impression on staff motivation? In other words, are there mechanisms in place, both formal and casual, by which Gravity staff feel valued and recognized apart from monetary compensation and a reduction in the disparity in salaries with their CEO?

Even with all of these more global discussions about organization-wide expectations and attitudes, it is unwise for employers to consider that each individual worker is motivated by the same things. Not all employees will necessarily react the same way within Gravity to Price's offer. Just as Dr. Gary Chapman has become popular with his concept of the "Five Love Languages", workplaces would do well to investigate what motivates each and every individual employee to be engaged in their work. Monetary compensation? Recognition? Personal fulfilment and ideological satisfaction? Participation in decision making processes? Relationships with their co-workers? What processes do we have in place to determine the factors that motivate employees?

I will be keeping an interested eye on developments over at Gravity, not because of the sensationalism brought about by Dan Price's offer but because I am interested to learn more about how such a move impacts other factors in the satisfaction of his staff in the longer term and therefore the implications for other workplaces.




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