From SHRM Online

Good pay, interesting and challenging work, and health insurance—along with five weeks of vacation, free lunch and lifetime gym membership as perks—are pretty much the components of the perfect job for a majority of U.S. workers, a Randstad Work Watch survey has found.

While perfection isn’t even on the radar for 17 percent of 1,008 U.S. adults surveyed—they’d be happy to have any job—the economy has not changed most U.S. workers’ idea of what constitutes the perfect job.
In fact, 83 percent say their definition wouldn’t change even after the economy improves.

For human resource professionals, the findings point to the importance of organizations staying true to their core values, says Eric Buntin, managing director of operations for Randstad.

“Core things still matter, and they really have held out over time,” he told SHRM Online. “Be true to yourself. Stay on point,” he advises employers, reminding them that the three key factors are good pay, health insurance and promotional opportunities.

“Keeping true to who you are in the market, and your position as a brand for employees should never change that much. If we look at organizations that are still in the marketplace they’ve done the same thing,” he told SHRM Online.

Elements of the Perfect Job
If they could design the perfect job, respondents said, it would offer:

• Good pay, 81 percent.
• Interesting, challenging work, 66 percent.
• Health insurance, 65 percent
• Perks such as five weeks of vacation (81 percent), free lunch (56 percent) and a lifetime gym membership (40 percent).

Ranked lowest: working for a company with a strong corporate social responsibility platform, 32 percent.

A company’s strong corporate social platform and perks/incentives were elements few workers saw as increasing in importance to the job when the economy turns around.

Although various surveys have shown that employees leave poor managers, not jobs, 59 percent of adults said that working for a great manager is no more important during the downturn than in an improved economy.

Concierge benefits and location flexibility, such as allowing telecommuting, also are seen as no more or less important to employees’ concept of the perfect job when the economy improves, Buntin noted. Such benefits might come into play in a tight job market where the organization wants to gain a recruiting edge.

Buntin thinks that voluntary paid and unpaid sabbaticals didn’t garner much interest—only 18 percent—because of the pressure employees are feeling to be productive and the fear that being off the workplace radar could hurt their job or career prospects.

“Time away from the job could have ramifications,” he theorized. “You could come back to a totally different company.”

Employees could find themselves wondering where they fit into the organization, what their job will look like and what their responsibilities will be.

Close to one-third want more responsibility in their perfect job (31 percent), something desired by a higher percentage of men (36 percent) and adults from Generation Y (43 percent) than others.

Gen Y likely wants more opportunities to prove themselves in the marketplace, and Buntin noted it is a slight shift away from the importance that generation has placed on vertical learning opportunities, interesting assignments and networking opportunities with peers.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they already are in their perfect job or field—39 percent are performing their perfect job and 22 percent would stay in their field but in a different role, according to the Randstad survey, released Oct. 1, 2009. Close to one-fourth (22 percent) said their ideal job would be in a completely different line of work.

More women than men say they would be doing the same thing in their ideal job (42 percent vs. 35 percent), but men are more likely to wish they had a different job in the same field. Boomers and workers born before 1945 were more likely than Generations X and Y to describe themselves as being in the perfect job.
The online survey was conducted Aug. 28, 2009, through Sept. 1, 2009.

Kathy Gurchiek is associate editor for HR News.

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