Job Applicants Can Support a Company’s Mission—and Still Ask for More Money
Research suggests that would-be employees fear that negotiating for a higher salary will make them look selfish
3 min
Want to work for a company that says it makes the world a better place? Be careful—you might feel guilted out of asking for higher pay.
Job postings today are peppered with language promoting an organisation’s mission, its purpose and the importance of making an impact. But those positive messages can have a chilling effect on applicants. In several studies, my colleagues and I found that the social messages in job postings make people think it would be a bad idea to ask for more money. They fear that the managers will think of them as selfish, or that company values make salary requests taboo.
Great reluctance
To be clear, the problem isn’t that companies advertise broad social initiatives—known as social impact framing—or that they want employees to genuinely care about the work itself. Longstanding research has even shown that corporate social programs can benefit employees, who enjoy a greater sense of motivation and meaningfulness when their work demonstrably makes a positive difference.
But this notion of higher purpose can make applicants wary of seeking higher pay.
My colleagues and I tested this idea over five experiments that measured how applicants handled salary negotiations with different companies: Some were described with phrases such as “mission orientation,” “higher purpose” and “giving back,” while others weren’t. We didn’t say whether the company was a nonprofit, engaged in charitable giving or could afford higher wages; our focus was on the language or framing used to describe the work, regardless of the company’s business model.
The results were remarkably consistent. Across the studies, job candidates exposed to social impact framing told us the company would see it as crass or inappropriate to ask for material rewards like a higher salary—so they avoided negotiating for more.
In the first study, 392 participants provided open-ended responses as to whether they would ask for higher pay at hypothetical companies, along with their rationale. Those who were given social impact framing were 32 percentage points less likely to say “yes” to negotiating. In addition, the group who gave negative responses was more than twice as likely as the control group to use phrases such as “doing so would be taboo,” “make you look selfish if you asked,” and “would likely make the organization less interested in hiring me.”
In the second and third studies, we tested the effect in real-world contexts. In one, we asked 438 undergraduate students whether they would ask for more money for a purportedly real on-campus job opportunity. In the other, we asked 1,525 online workers recruited from a crowdsourcing marketplace to bid for a purported writing-related task.
In each case, the odds of negotiating were approximately 42 percentage points lower when the work was framed in social impact terms. Survey responses showed that this was driven by workers’ perceptions that they would be violating the organisation’s expectations for employee motivation by showing interest in higher pay.
Our fourth study replicated the effects above, while our fifth study showed that effects held across a range of industries—from education to financial services.
A matter of perception
Why did this happen? We theorise that the applicants assumed that managers and companies had motivation purity bias—thinking that employees who are interested in a job’s material rewards care less about the work itself. And, indeed, previous research has shown that this bias does affect managers’ decisions.
That means few applicants want to be seen as the person who gives priority to money over more lofty, altruistic goals. You either love the work itself and want to help others or care about material rewards like higher pay. It can’t be both.
But that attitude is simply romanticising. Research shows that people often do their jobs better when they get a combination of extrinsic rewards like high salary and intrinsic ones like idealism about a mission.
The consequences of holding back on salary requests can be huge. Previous research has shown that fear of asking for even a small increase in starting pay can cost people hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career. For companies, skimping on pay because of misguided beliefs can lead to missed opportunities to boost performance and productivity.
How to overcome the bias? Employees should do research on companies to see how the businesses react to salary requests. For their part, companies can create greater pay transparency, use objective criteria to set salary and train managers to watch out for bias.
Passion for work is wonderful. But we shouldn’t romanticise it as the only legitimate reason to take a job.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
As housing drives wealth and policy debate, the real risk is an economy hooked on growth without productivity to sustain it.
Limited to 630 units, Lamborghini’s latest Urus Capsule pushes personalisation further than ever, blending hybrid performance with over 70 bespoke design combinations.
Odd Culture Group brings a new kind of after-dark energy to the CBD, where daiquiris, disco and design collide beneath the city streets.
2 min
Sydney’s nightlife has long flirted with reinvention, but its latest arrival suggests something more deliberate is taking shape beneath the surface.
Razz Room, the new underground bar and disco from Odd Culture Group, has opened in the CBD, marking the group’s first step into the city centre.
Tucked below street level on York Street, the venue blends cocktail culture with a shifting, late-night rhythm that moves from after-work drinks to full dancefloor immersion.
The space itself is designed to evolve over the course of an evening. An upper bar offers a more intimate setting, suited to early drinks and conversation, while a sunken dancefloor anchors the venue’s later hours, with a rotating program of DJs and live performances.
“Razz Room will really change shape throughout a single evening,” says Odd Culture Group CEO Rebecca Lines.
“Earlier, it’s geared towards post-work drinks with a happy hour, substantial food offering, and music at a level where you can still talk.”
As the night progresses, that tone shifts.
“As the evening progresses at Razz Room, you can expect the music to get a little louder and the focus will shift to live performance with recurring residencies and DJs that flow from disco to house, funk, and jazz,” Rebecca says.
The concept draws heavily on New York’s underground club scene before disco became mainstream, referencing venues such as The Mudd Club and Paradise Garage. But the intention is not nostalgia.
“The space told us what it wanted to be,” Lines explains. “Disco started as a counter culture… Razz Room is no nostalgia project, it’s a reimagining of the next era of the discotheque.”
Design, too, plays its part in shaping the experience. The upper level is warm and textural, with timber finishes and burnt-orange tones, while the sunken floor shifts into a more theatrical mood, combining Art Deco references with a raw, industrial edge.
The PG rating has become the king of the box office. The entertainment business now relies on kids dragging their parents to theatres.
Rugged coastal drives and fireside drams define a slow, indulgent journey through Scotland’s far north.
