Thursday, November 23, 2006

The Take on Time

If you're paid by the hour, you're more likely to think of time as money. And you may be more likely than salaried staffers to trade your time for more pay.

Hourly employees are more likely to choose working more to earn more, but salaried types are more inclined to take time off or keep their hours and pay constant, according to new research.

Overall, there are significant differences in attitudes between hourly and salaried workers when it comes to money and time, according to three related studies by Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and doctoral student Sanford E. DeVoe.

"People gravitate toward things that are easier to evaluate, and it's easier to figure out the value of a paid hour than it is, say, the value of an hour spent in a leisure activity. So they choose work over play," Pfeffer said in a statement.

The researchers interviewed workers on a commuter train about time and money. They found hourly types were more likely to treat the two as similar commodities.

When salaried staffers were asked to figure out their hourly rate, they started seeing dollars. "They began to think more like hourly employees."

-- Vickie Elmer