They may have chosen an inelegant label.

But the folks at employee recognition specialist Globoforce are on to something with their concept of psychic income—a notion that could prove to be vital to workforce morale during these tough times.

At first blush, psychic income sounds like it might refer to the take-home pay of a palm reader. But in a press release earlier this week, Globoforce defined the term as “the need for social acceptance, increased self-esteem and enhanced self-realization.” In effect, they are talking about the strokes bosses can give workers. Those are easy to give, and appear to be surprisingly valuable.

Globoforce cited a number of reports that suggest the value of a “thank you” can meet or exceed cash as a motivator. Among them is a study from Japanese researchers finding that a compliment triggers a reaction in the brain similar to that caused by a monetary reward.

“A strategic recognition program that thanks and rewards employees can lift workers out of the ‘recessionary rut’ that many are falling into,” Derek Irvine, Globoforce vice president of global strategy, said in a statement. “This approach is essential now as companies seek cost-effective, creative ways to spread good will among their employees, show their appreciation for a job well done and boost productivity.”

Irvine’s call for more kudos comes on top of other evidence that talk can have important results while big bonuses may be overrated. In a new report from consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide and professional group WorldatWork, 48 percent of employers surveyed cited improved communication as one of the three most effective options to reduce employee stress.

In a New York Times op-ed piece this week, Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, wrote about some fascinating experiments that indicate large bonuses can backfire. In one case, people were offered a payment for performing a set of tasks exceptionally well. The subjects were divided into three groups, with some told they’d get a small bonus, others a medium bonus and some a high bonus. Those given the chance to earn the biggest payment did the worst.

Ariely argues that money motivates people but also can add stress, and at some point the stress overwhelms the motivating effect. “If our tests mimic the real world, then higher bonuses may not only cost employers more but also discourage executives from working to the best of their ability,” Ariely wrote.

For his part, Stanford University professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has challenged the wisdom of pay-for-performance schemes.

“The evidence is overwhelming that individual pay for performance does not improve organizational performance except in very limited cases,” he told Workforce Management recently.

A cynical company might take this all in and decide to revoke raises altogether. That would be wrongheaded, even in today’s belt-tightening climate.

But it’s clear people aren’t driven by money alone. There’s something to be said for saying nice things to your workers.

President-elect Barack Obama and other political leaders have talked about taking swift action to get the economy back on course and aid struggling Americans. But missing from the debate is close attention to the skimpy, counter-productive U.S. safety net, even as hundreds of thousands of Americans are tumbling toward it.

The scale of that collective fall was made clear last week: Nearly a quarter-million payroll jobs were slashed in October, on top of some 284,000 jobs lost in September. The unemployment rate jumped from 6.1 percent in September to 6.5 percent in October. On Monday, a report from research group the Conference Board indicated employers will continue to “aggressively reduce payrolls well into 2009.”

On his campaign Web site, Obama calls for updating the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance system, which gives some workers dislocated by trade such benefits as income support and a health coverage tax credit. Obama would take steps such as extending TAA to service industries and creating flexible education accounts to help workers retrain.

These are worthy steps. But Obama’s plan appears to overlook the many folks who lose their job for reasons unrelated to global trade. Construction employment, for example, fell by 49,000 in October.

The push by Democrats in Congress to extend unemployment insurance benefits also is promising but only a partial solution.

In particular, U.S. political leaders seem oblivious to how paltry unemployment checks are. In California, for example, unemployment payments top out at $450 a week. That’s about half the income of someone earning annual wages of $46,700. It’s hard to get by on half your income. And in a way, the cap is tougher for someone used to making roughly $70,000—say a software programmer or accountant—who has to make ends meet with a mere third of their wages.

In the past decade, Americans have become more open to government helping the needy. But unemployment benefits in the U.S. still reflect a philosophy of rugged individualism, and they are among the most miserly in the developed world.

Apart from stingy payments, there are gaps in unemployment insurance coverage. And the federal law requiring firms to give advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings is weak.

Obama is right to think about large-bore measures like a major public investment in a “clean energy” economy. But it would be a serious oversight to ignore America’s flimsy safety net.

The combination of sudden job losses and scant unemployment payments is sure to worsen the U.S. economy. People in such circumstances could well lose their homes, exacerbating the housing market collapse.

They would have little money to spend to boost the economy. And the stories of their hardship—retold through family, friends and the media—would further shake consumer confidence.

A more generous, taut safety net could help restore that confidence, underpin personal spending and lead to calmer, more productive employees.

Weaving a stronger net also would be humane and embody the sense of national solidarity that Obama has spoken about so eloquently.

If change is coming to America, shouldn’t it come to our economic safety net too?

The Bush administration has sought to help out workers and businesses in these trying times by launching a new Web site with a number of resources. But www.EconomicRecovery.gov has shortcomings. And they call into question yet again the administration’s decision last year to shut down the public job board America’s Job Bank.

The new site offers assistance on topics including unemployment insurance, local job openings and retirement security information.

“We want to make information easily accessible and quickly available to American workers affected by the economic downturn,” Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said in a statement.

Kudos to Chao and other officials for trying to create a helping hub for workers, who confront decimated 401(k) retirement accounts, ever-clearer signs of a recession and an unemployment rate that climbed 1.4 percentage points from September 2007 to September 2008, to 6.1 percent.

But key information is not necessarily “easily accessible” or “quickly available” on the new site. Finding local jobs, for example, can be byzantine and slow. Trying to look up accounting jobs in the New Jersey area, for example, can take you seven clicks or more. And two clicks in, you see a list of resources for New Jersey that doesn’t even directly mention job listings: You have to guess that either the “New Jersey State Gateway” or “New Jersey Department of Labor” sites will get you to the jobs.

And what if you’re willing to relocate across the country to find a job? You can eventually get to private-sector national job banks like JOBcentral, National Labor Exchange or Monster.com from the EconomicRecovery.gov site. But it’s not immediately clear how. And if you click on “One-Stop Career Center,” it still takes four more clicks to get to JOBcentral.

It all would be much simpler if America’s Job Bank were still around. Dating to 1995, the site was one of first job boards on the Internet and remained one of the biggest, with about 2.2 million jobs, when it was closed in mid-2007. It was national in scale, allowing people to find jobs locally and across the country.

Chao’s department said America’s Job Bank had outdated technology and duplicated what was already available in the private sector. But businesses and state officials appreciated the site, which offered free job listings to employers. It contained many postings for lower-skilled jobs. And other evidence, including internal Labor Department research, argued for its preservation.

At a time when thousands of U.S. workers are losing jobs and many more face that possibility, the absence of America’s Job Bank is all the more confounding. If it were around today, would it be helping Americans better respond to the economic challenges at hand? Quite possibly.

It seems a pro-privatization ideology may have helped kill America’s Job Bank. Ironically, the Bush administration recently did a philosophical about-face on free markets, bailing out huge firms in response to the financial industry meltdown.

That change of heart was too late for America’s Job Bank, leaving the country to wonder once again if it was shortchanged.