Looked at one way, a raft of recent data about what employees want suggests they are hopelessly schizophrenic.

But it’s also possible to read the research as showing workers to be entirely sane—and asking for things employers either can’t fathom or don’t want to know about.

Let’s look at job security first. According to a recent Watson Wyatt Worldwide survey, job security was cited as a reason for joining an organization by 37 percent of top-performing employees, making it the second-highest-ranking reason. But research from the Corporate Executive Board indicates that once workers take a spot in a firm, organizational stability is not one of the most important drivers of employee engagement.

Indeed, employees say they want excitement. In a Salary.com study published this year, 35 percent of employees named “boredom” as a significant factor in an employee’s decision to look for a new job, enough to make it the fourth-highest factor. But Corporate Executive Board data show that employee engagement is deflated by disruptive change such as massive restructuring, and even more so by the anticipation of such change.

Employees also say they want a caring, encouraging employer. In a recent Randstad study, 80 percent of American employees said their ideal employer “cares about their employees as much as their customers,” putting that response in a tie for first place. And 75 percent of employees said that “recognizing and rewarding employee successes” was an important leadership practice.

That ranked as employees’ top answer for leadership practices. But right behind it was a nod to standards: 74 percent of employees said that “holding people accountable for their behavior” was an important leadership practice.

Given these responses, do employees collectively suffer from multiple personality disorder? I think not. Taken as a whole, what workers are getting at is a common-sense desire for a baseline of economic stability as well as a supportive yet challenging work environment.

These goals can be better understood in the context of economic and cultural trends going back 30 years. Economic risk has shifted to workers and families from business and government since the 1980s. Layoffs, pay cuts and roller coaster retirement accounts during the past year have added to the financial anxiety.

What’s more, the rise of social networking has highlighted the role others play in enabling individual success. And it’s ever clearer that a degree of predictability promotes happiness. 

Employers don’t seem to get this picture of what workers want. In the Salary.com study, only 20 percent of employers thought boredom was a significant factor in an employee’s decision to look elsewhere—a difference of 15 percentage points from employees. And in the Watson Wyatt report, job security didn’t turn up among the top five reasons employers gave for why employees join a firm.

I’d bet the disconnect is partly ideological. Many company execs adhere to a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality, downplaying the role of the group or the need for stability. It also may be that companies consciously want to avoid opening the door to an earlier era where their flexibility to hire and fire was limited.

In any event, some companies seem to be sticking their heads in the sand about security. Adam Zuckerman, a consultant with advisory firm Towers Perrin, says a lot of companies don’t ask directly about security when surveying employees. Another business consultant involved with engagement issues, Laurie Bassi, says she has talked with company leaders who didn’t want to ask their employees about job security.

“This is kind of like going to the doctor and saying, ‘I don’t want you to do that cancer test, because I just don’t want to know,’ ” Bassi says.

The attitude of denial suggests to me that business leaders, more so than workers, may need a head examination. In a world where engaged employees are increasingly critical to business success, a wise company will want to think clearly about how to win over its workforce.