For people who want to earn more income, taking the opportunity to work overtime is just normal. But according to a new study, the outcome may not actually help them. It may instead result to very poor performance and reduced satisfaction.
The research team spearheaded by mathematical economist Dr. Christian Bayer of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the University of Bonn was able to link long-term income increases with personal satisfaction. High salary gives pleasure to people. Yes, but only if the increase in pay is long term. Even if not quite high for as long as the increase persists, that still meets the person's satisfaction.
Of course, given that the working hours are not extended.
Researchers said that another determinant - the length of time that employees work - also affect personal happiness, not just the rise and fall of wages. People who consistently work for longer hours tend to become less happy. Although previous studies have noted that having no work at all results to dissatisfaction, the new study explains that it is due to the lack of income and not to the lack of work per se, Universitat Bonn writes.
In their study, a new approach was used to gauge the effect of income to the level of personal happiness. The level of income was not kept the same all throughout and fluctuations were applied from time to time in order to see if (permanent versus transitory) rise have different effects. There they found long-term income increase to have significantly improved the satisfaction of the subjects as compared to fleeting pay rise.
"[Once] one controls for the differential effects of persistent and transitory income shocks, employment per se no longer contributes to a person's well-being," the researchers write as quoted in ScienceAlert.
Professor Bayer also iterated that wages and working hours have a major effect with a worker's happiness, and in order to achieve greater satisfaction in life, one has to experience a persistent increase in income while the length of work is kept the same. A person, therefore, needs to think twice first before chasing that extra income. It should not cause him to spend more time in heavy work and just a little time for unwinding or recreational activities.
The study is published in American Economic Journal.