This article was contributed by CareerBliss.com, a career community dedicated to helping people find happiness in the workplace.
Figuring out the most fair and feasible compensation for the employees of your startup can be a daunting task. Salaries are a major component of the foundation of your empire, because the salary that you are able to offer may be a contributing factor to the quality of work your employees produce. It remains that start-ups usually do not have sufficient resources to allocate high salaries for their employees. But, remember, salary compensation is not the only factor that will keep your employees happy.
A well-researched and reasonable salary should be a primary concern, but if you are unable to reach monetary standards initially, you can encourage productivity by rewarding success, establishing a happy work culture, and maintaining a pleasant relationship. In fact, a recent study by CareerBliss indicates that the majority of the happiest professionals in America say that salary is not the chief factor in determining their happiness and motivation. Instead, factors like work environment, relationships with coworkers and boss, and the work they do were ranked higher when asked what determines their job happiness. For instance, administrative assistants—whose average salary income was $38,357.00—were ranked as one of the top 10 happiest professionals in the US primarily because of their day-to-day tasks and the people with whom they work.
Although salary may not be the chief concern of the reported happy professionals, this data is not a green light to disregard employee salary altogether. Of course, if your employee learns that others doing the same tasks are getting higher compensation, then the likelihood that your employees may feel unappreciated is high. That’s why it’s in your best interest to pull out all the stops. Make sure that you treat you employees well by not only ensuring a happy atmosphere in the workplace but also a fair and reasonable salary that does not let employees feel unrewarded. CareerBliss has a great tool to research company salary information based on job title, company, and industry. You can find out the average salary for specific professions and the industry as a whole as well. Also, oftentimes the average salary differs from state to state, so CareerBliss offers the option of narrowing you search based on city and state as well. For instance, if your start-up company in Texas requires an administrative assistant, for instance, you can get a comprehensive understanding of what a reasonable salary should be by filling out the job title and city, accordingly. So, if you are a consumer service start-up in Los Angeles and you want to compare salaries for an administrative assistant, you can see the average industry salary for consumer services is 43k. There are a multitude of companies that offer the average salary for administrative assistants and you can research a reasonable salary range based on comparable companies.
Deciding on your employees’ salary does not have to be the end-all, be-all in determining the productivity rate of your workers. If you offer a reasonable salary—though it may not be the highest initially—along with an enjoyable work environment, your employees can still feel appreciated and motivated enough to help your start-up succeed.