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The question of justice is what infuriates people so much. If employees think they are getting a rough deal, they will not respond well. There is an experiment conducted by primatologists from Emory University Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal. Two Capuchin monkeys perform the same task, for the same reward – a piece of cucumber. But after a while a monkey is given a tastier grape. The other monkey notices and reaches for hers, but when they give her another piece of cucumber, she goes crazy, throws the cucumber out of the cage and refuses to continue doing her job.
The same kind of hysteria happens when a small child is given half a cookie after seeing his brother get a whole one. And no matter how old we are, we can’t stop our brains from firing when we feel we’ve been wronged. But instead of raising hysteria, we respond in other ways.
At work, this can mean giving up. De Wessin is not the only one who did it. “Google keeps saying it’s a normal depletion, and I think you can get the numbers to tell both stories,” she said. “But he looked taller than usual and much more senior-oriented than I had seen before when I left, and I saw a sequel to that.”
Even if people do not give up, they can rebel in different ways. “If you think your employer is treating you badly, it’s just human nature not to work so hard,” said Brian Crop, head of human resources research at consulting firm Gartner. There is a change in thinking, he explains, if people think they are not being paid fairly for their contributions, then why should they contribute more or even at all? “Maybe even worse than leaving,” he says, “they gave up on the spot.”
A study by researchers at Columbia University found that employees reduced their productivity at work by 52 percent when they found that their colleagues were paid more. They were also 13.5 percentage points less likely to even occur (compared to a base of 94 percent attendance). So even if employees are reluctant to accept pay cuts, they are likely to respond by working half as hard.
The worst part of the consequences is perhaps what it says about companies applying these pay cuts. Kendra, an information architect at Google’s Seattle campus, saw first-hand how employees’ attitudes toward the company have changed. “I’ve talked to a number of different people who have just left the company because they don’t see growth in our organization,” she said.
Kendra has decided to return to the office instead of reducing her salary, equivalent to losing a recent salary increase that took her years to receive. “But I also have a manager who is incredibly flexible,” she says. Her manager had already told her that she would not need to come to the office three days a week. But what if that wasn’t an option? “I think that would set a deadline for my participation,” she said. Simply put, she would give up in a year.
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