More workers report willingness to stay wedded to their jobs

MarketWatch (MCT) - Do you love your job enough to marry it? That's the somewhat tongue-in-cheek question of an annual survey that seeks to find out much people love their work.

Apparently, this year more people than last year are ready for a long-term commitment with their cubicle: 15 percent of working adults said they love their job enough to marry it.

That's up from 9 percent a year ago, according to a survey in February of about 1,240 U.S. adults 18 or older, working full- or part-time, conducted by Taleo, a Dublin, Calif.-based consulting firm and staffing-management software maker.

That's not such a surprising finding, given this labor market: Plenty of people probably feel lucky to have paid work of just about any kind.

"We may be seeing a little bit of 'I love having a job this year,'" said Alice Snell, vice president of Taleo Research.

Still, Snell said 15 percent is a relatively low figure. For companies, "I still think there are some alarm bells there," she said. "We're still looking at workers who, if we use the Valentine's Day metaphor, are not really feeling that deep commitment."

Given the relentless news of layoffs nationwide, and the overarching sense that this is an employers' labor market, workers may be surprised to hear that some companies are worried about holding onto workers. But Snell said retention is a concern for some firms.

"In a sense it's counterintuitive, but in fact what we see with our customers and in other surveys, we see retention really as the No. 1 focus," she said.

Even at companies that have cut their work force, the workers that remain, Snell said, "are critical to being able to sustain during this recession and definitely to be prepared for the upturn."

Plus, the increased productivity that's likelier when workers are highly engaged may be "more critical in this economy even than in a robust economy," Snell said.

Thus, she said, companies ought to be worried that, even though 87 percent of those surveyed said they "enjoy" or "like" what they do, two out of five workers still said they're open to looking for a new position and 13 percent said they're actively pursuing new opportunities.

Holding onto top-performing employees entails a number of strategies, such as clearly communicating the company's goals _ which may have changed drastically in this economy compared with just a year ago _ and what it expects of workers, Snell said.

Also, companies need to clearly identify to workers how they can advance their careers within the company, she said. "Is it easier for your workers to find out about new jobs in other companies than in your own? If so, that's a red flag," Snell said.

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Not surprisingly, the survey found that workers' feelings about their jobs varied depending on their position and industry.

Those workers who have a college degree were likelier than those who don't to report being "highly engaged" at work _ 62 percent of college graduates versus 48 percent of those without a degree.

And those with higher income were more likely to love or like their work: 59 percent of workers earning more than $50,000 a year reported being highly engaged compared with 45 percent making less than that.

Meanwhile, people in professional-services or public-sector work were more likely to love or like their job than those in other jobs; 14 percent of the workers who said they don't feel engaged at work are in the financial-services industry.

"If you look at the industry specific data, it's pretty clear, the emotional mindset of these industries," Snell said. Financial services "is the industry that's gone from the peak to the trough in the most extreme way."

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