The six work values
Work values describe what a person needs from a job in order to find it satisfying, as distinct from what activities they enjoy. This test administers the O*NET Work Importance Locator, a twenty-card sort published by the U.S. Department of Labor, which ranks six work values: Achievement, Independence, Recognition, Relationships, Support, and Working Conditions. Its scores are ipsative — they rank a person's values against each other, not against other people.
The theory behind the instrument is the Theory of Work Adjustment: satisfaction comes from the fit between what a person needs from work and what the work gives back. Each of the six values below is measured by three or more specific needs, and every one of the twenty cards you sort belongs to exactly one of them.
Achievement
· Doing work you are good atYou want work that uses what you are actually good at and gives you the sense of having accomplished something. Results matter to you more than the conditions around them.
Independence
· Deciding how the work gets doneYou want room to make your own decisions, try your own ideas, and plan your own work. The method matters to you as much as the outcome.
Recognition
· Advancement, standing, and creditYou want your work to be seen and to lead somewhere — advancement, responsibility over others, and credit that is actually attributed to you.
Relationships
· Colleagues, service, and staying straightYou want colleagues you get along with, work that is of service to other people, and never to be pushed into something that conflicts with your own sense of right and wrong.
Support
· Management that backs you upYou want to be treated fairly by the organisation, trained properly, and backed by supervisors who will stand behind their people. You are asking about the management, not the work.
Working Conditions
· Pay, security, variety, and the daily shape of the jobYou care about the concrete terms of the work: what it pays, how secure it is, how varied the days are, how busy you are kept, and whether you work alongside people or on your own.
What each value is measured by
The six work values, the specific needs the instrument measures under each, and what to look for when you are researching a real job. Occupations in the O*NET database carry their own ratings on the same six values.
| Work value | Also called | Needs measured | What to look for in a job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Achievement | Doing work you are good at | Ability Utilization · Achievement | The role uses skills you already have, rather than mostly coordination or waiting. |
| Independence | Deciding how the work gets done | Creativity · Responsibility · Autonomy | Decisions about how to do the work sit with the person doing it. |
| Recognition | Advancement, standing, and credit | Advancement · Recognition · Authority | There is a real ladder, and people visibly climb it. |
| Relationships | Colleagues, service, and staying straight | Co-workers · Social Service · Moral Values | The people you would work with day to day are ones you would choose. |
| Support | Management that backs you up | Company Policies and Practices · Supervision, Human Relations · Supervision, Technical | Training is scheduled and budgeted, not improvised. |
| Working Conditions | Pay, security, variety, and the daily shape of the job | Activity · Independence · Variety · Compensation · Security · Working Conditions | Pay compares well with what the same work earns elsewhere. |
Why you have to rank instead of rate
Most online tests would ask you to rate each statement from "not important" to "very important". That does not work here. Asked in isolation, almost everyone says almost everything about a job is important — fair pay, good colleagues, decent management, work that means something — and six near-identical high scores tell you nothing about what you would actually give up.
So the instrument makes you sort the cards into five columns of exactly four. You cannot put everything at the top. That constraint is the measurement, and it is why the result is worth something — but it also means the scores are ipsative: they rank your values against each other and against nothing else. There is no percentile here, and there cannot be one.
About this test
The twenty card statements and the scoring are the O*NET Work Importance Locator, built by the National Center for O*NET Development for the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). The sorting board is ours, built under the O*NET Tools Developer License. Northstarself has modified this tool; USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested the modification.
USDOL/ETA retired the Work Importance Locator in June 2024 and now archives its materials as-is. The occupation-side work-value ratings your result is matched against are a separate, still-maintained part of the O*NET Database. In its own validation, the instrument identified a person's single highest work value consistently across a two-month retest 62% of the time, and its User's Guide states it should not be used to establish the rank order of all six values — so this site leads with your top two and says plainly that the middle of the ranking is soft.