Can money buy happiness in the workplace? A famous study from Princeton University researchers showed higher income increases happiness, but only up to about $75,000 per year. Beyond that, higher pay doesn’t change happiness much.

Glassdoor has concluded that money and happiness are linked, however, research from the jobs and recruiting site shows while higher pay is statistically linked to higher job satisfaction, the impact is small. To most workers, pay matters much less than other factors like culture and values, career opportunities and the quality of senior leadership.
So with higher pay, do workplace priorities shift? To study this question, Glassdoor started with a sample of more than 615,000 Glassdoor users who contributed both a salary report and a company review since 2014. Here’s what they found.

The study’s results shows the most important workplace priorities for all workers in the sample together, regardless of income level. Similar to previous research, Glassdoor found three factors are the main drivers of employee satisfaction. The culture and values of the organization are the largest predictor of employee satisfaction, accounting for 22.1 percent of the pie. The quality of senior leadership (21.1 percent) and career opportunities (18.8 percent) are also strong predictors of overall employee satisfaction.

By contrast, positive business outlook of the organization (13.9 percent), work-life balance (12.1 percent), and the quality of compensation and benefits (12.0 percent) are the least important predictors of employee satisfaction. Click here for the full survey results from Glassdoor.