It is a common phenomenon in Singapore for workers to be disgruntled. While this is partly fueled by Singaporeans loving to complain about just anything, it is also fueled by employers looking for cheap and good workers. But we are not here to pin blame on workers or employers. Like any phenomenon, it should be reviewed, analyzed and understood. Over time, this would lead to a suitable handling of the phenomenon. Do not get me wrong, I think there will always be disgruntled workers in society. That is not a concern. It only becomes a concern when this proportion of disgruntled workers is very high. Some mobility of labour creates a dynamic labour market and allows market forces to come into play. However too much mobility generates lots of hiring, training and discontinuity costs for companies and is definitely not a good thing.

Before I get into the main topic, let me put a disclaimer. I am not an advocate of the Saccharine (artificial sweetener) approach. So I am not going to propose a "feel good" formula which you can recite to yourself everytime you feel down and out. Neither am I going to propose some mind performance skill that you can perfect and improve your work efficiency by 88.8%. That I will leave to those who capitalize on the emotionally unbalanced and mentally weak.

Rather I would like to suggest a more scientific basis to workers being disgruntled. These workers are normal human beings who have their normal lives, normal aspirations and normal behaviour. But under certain circumstances at work or personally, they will become disgruntled and look to leave the job. It is hoped that a more scientific understanding of this will help employers and workers understand the workers and their emotions at work better.

And of course the most important thing is to make workers happy. That should be what we as humans aim for in life, to be happy. Of course there are many means of achieving that, but let’s stick to just simple happiness from going to work and getting paid.

We all work for Pay, so that has to be the main motivation for workers. In return for pay, employers require Work from workers, which requires time and effort. In addition to that there are certain factors that keep us in the job such as a pleasant working environment, friendly colleagues, an understanding boss or a rewarding job. There are also push factors that make us dislike the work and want to leave our job. This can be the exact opposite of the factors we mentioned above such as a terrible working environment, hostile colleagues, an unreasonable boss and an unsatisfying job. All this can be considered Environmental Factors as well as Job Satisfaction.

There are people who stay in the job despite having a terrible working environment, an unreasonable boss and an unrewarding job. This could be due to a perceived future value as a result of experience earned in this job. That is why professionals slog it out as junior auditors, lawyers, doctors or finance professionals. The common reason is that a few years of experience in this job will a good stepping stone for a better job in the future. This can be considered Future Benefit.

Assuming all this factors can be quantified in term of dollars, we can thus put them all into an equation as follows:

Pay – Work + Environmental Factors + Job Satisfaction + Future Benefit = Emotion

If Emotion is greater than zero, that would mean that the worker is happy in the job. Vice versa, if Emotion is negative, than the worker is disgruntled. Looking at it deeper, assuming Pay is equal to Work, then Emotion is dependent on Environmental Factors, Job Satisfaction and Future Benefit. Of course these three factors are soft factors which can vary from person to person. Some people prefer a more structured environment, while some people prefer more freedom to express themselves.

Pay and Work go together. This is the most direct tradeoff that determines the Emotion. This is when the other Three Soft Factors are neutral or not significant in whether they are positive or negative.

To achieve positive Emotion when Pay is greater than Work, the other Three Soft Factors can be negative as long as the negative amount is less than the difference between Pay and Work. On the other hand, when Pay is less than Work, the other Three Soft Factors have to compensate by being more positive than the negative difference between Pay and Work.

Pay is the easiest to quantify and can be summed up by adding monthly pay to any other bonuses perks, benefits, allowances or commissions.

Work on the other hand is simply to quantify if you do for example a sales jobs. Take the sales that you generated and divide that by the exploitation factor to get Work. This exploitation factor is usually 10 and in a sense reveals how much the employer has "exploited" the worker. If you don’t do a job that is simple to quantify, you can try to use a management fee, consultant’s hourly charge, percentage of company turnover or value of business unit and divide that by the exploitation factor.

Environmental Factors, Job Satisfaction and Future Benefit are pretty tough to quantify and the best thing you can do really is to just stick out an estimate. Of course the most important thing is to determine whether the factor is positive or negative, as well as the significance of the positiveness and negativeness.

Being humans, we then to take things for granted and then to focus on the negative side of things. For example, a worker with a nice office environment and good supportive colleagues but an unreasonable boss, will always complain first about the boss rather than appreciate the environment or colleagues.

To get a feel, you can do this simple exercise. Say you have an unreasonable boss, and you have a chance to work in another exactly identical company, but for a reasonable boss. You would probably be willing to take a pay cut for this positive change. The extent of the pay cut that you would take is the negative Environmental Factor that your unreasonable boss is causing you.

Below are some important sub-factors that make up the factor:

Environmental Factor – Office, Colleagues, Boss, External Parties

Job Satisfaction – Nature of work, Reward & Recognition, Personal Fit for Work

For Future Benefit, the promise of the new job should bring with it a higher level of Emotion, possibly from Pay or the three soft factors. A good way to estimate Future Benefit is to take the potential annual increase in Pay from the new job and divide it by the number of years you think you have to work in your current job in order to get the new job.

Ok, so now after all that estimation work, you have now calculated your Emotion at the current job. If your emotion is positive, then you are like an option in the money. You can continue to enjoy and appreciate the job, though you probably will not work too hard, in case you increase Work without an increase in Pay. You will only work harder if you are promised a pay increase or think you are going to get a pay increase. Alternatively if Job Satisfaction increases to offset a negative increase in Work, then your Emotion should still be positive.

If your emotion is negative, the easiest thing to do is ask for a pay increase. But this is not always possible. Then as a responsible worker, you can try to work on the other three soft factors. This can include improving relationships with your boss or colleagues and/or trying to understand job better to hopefully improve Job Satisfaction. Of course, the equation also says, try not to do so much Work. That is why disgruntled workers go home early and do not work late.

Of course, over time, if you find that Emotion is getting increasingly negative, then it is time for a serious discussion with your boss, get an internal transfer or find a new job. In assess new employment options, you would have to estimate your Emotion in the new job to determine whether it is worth the switch. Most people make up their minds through the increase in Pay from the new job. This is not wrong, as long as the three soft factors are not significantly different from the old job.

Well, I have been going on and on about workers here. Now its time to bring in the bosses. If you are a boss looking at your workers, the first thing you need to do is to estimate their Pay Work Tradeoff. If this is positive, then assuming the other Three Soft Factors are neutral, your workers should be happy. If the Pay Work Tradeoff is negative, then you might want to consider improving the Three Soft Factors to prevent your workers from getting disgruntled or lower the level of negative emotion. This improvement can come from looking at the personal fit and nature of job for each worker, improving the office environment and organizing some recreational activities. For Future Benefit, it may be strange for the employer to think about improving this. But having said that, if his company gains success and a good reputation, then Future Benefit of his employees will be enhanced. This can then offset some negative value from the Pay Work Tradeoff and the Three Soft Factors.

Of course, this calculation of Emotion is very dependent on perspectives and will definitely be very subjective. Two people may have different answers when doing the same estimation of a worker’s Emotion. This is caused by personal bias and also differences in personal value systems. While it is not rocket science, it is built on simple truths and factors. Its value lies in getting workers and bosses to start to look and appreciate the variables (Pay Work Tradeoff and Three Soft Factors) and the negative or positive value of that variable. Finally an equation is truly useful when the variables in the equation can be quantified. However there is still value in doing a qualitative analysis for workers and bosses using this equation.

Still at the end of the day, whether you quantify or qualify, the use of this equation is a personal exercise in self-awareness, personal truths and honest truths about the job. That is the truth that this equation tries to unlock for the user. So how good the equation is for the user, depends on how honest and open he is with using it.