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Prestige or pay?

Would you work for less money simply for the prestige of belonging to a company? I am not talking about accepting a lower salary for a worthy cause, or for pursuing a personal vocation;  I understand that financial reward is not always a primary driver when choosing employment.

Picture credit: pombinho

Picture credit: pombinho

But is it right for an employer to claim that their staff really trade off pay for the prestige of the company?

This question was triggered when I saw a report that IT staff at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) were paid less than the market rate, due to the prestige of working for the BBC.

If true, that seems a staggeringly feudal attitude to the employer/ employee relationship and anachronistic to the 21st Century. Dangerously close to corporate vanity too.

Nevertheless, I do realise there will be other factors in play but I still can’t get past the prestige thing.

After all, what creates prestige for any organization? Presumably a healthy mix of values and performance, rather than a self-serving recourse to heritage and status.

While I was thinking about non-financial employment drivers, I came across this great TED talk  Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Please reflect on the prestige question and consider: what personal value, if any, would you place on ‘prestige’ when considering a pay offer.

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  • Bill

    Yes and No. It is not the corporate name that necessarily grants prestige, but rather the valuation of the individual withing the corporate name. Many of the companies in the “Best Places to Work” do not have to elevate their employee pay to achieve loyalty and longevity. It is the actual joy of working for the company/boss/project that brings them to work with a high level of motivation. Now, granted there are those motivated only by the buying power of their paycheck but, I submit that valuation of the individual is key (one example, if the corporation worries about losing employees if they grant training to them, valuation is extremely lacking).

  • http://www.pantheonmanagement.co.uk Karim Hyatt

    Not sure I would want to work for an organisation who thought they were so prestigious that they could pay their employees below market rate. I must say, I laughed when the Beeb’s Mark Thompson announced that he would be hiring “at a discount”.

    We’ll probably see more rubbish programs and decisions as a result of “discounted” executives. Maybe they can do a 3 for 2 deal.

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  • David Davies

    It’s not about prestige. The prestige of a company is purely a proxy measure of other values such as security of tenure, investment in its people and quality of output. As an example the BBC scores very highly on all of these items (although security may have been a bit tarnished recently).

    Would I work for less for a prestigious company. If they invested strongly in their people and would enable me to work on very high quality output, then maybe. As we always say in project management “it all depends”.