OB Handout # 4

Job Satisfaction

What is Job Satisfaction?

--A psychological expression of contentment on the job.
--An emotional response to job situation.
--The extent to which an individual find fulfillment in his/her work.
--Employees’ perception of how well their job provides those things that are viewed as important.
--Individual’s general attitude towards his/her job.

According to Locke, job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experience.

Sources of Job Satisfaction

Work itself: The content of the work itself is great source of job satisfaction. The management may augment job satisfaction of the employees by redesigning the work. Some of the important measures may be as under:
Job Engineering: making the job interesting by innovative techniques and improved design of the equipments.
Job Enrichment: vertically loading the job to provide more responsibilities.
Job Rotation: moving employees from one relatively simpler job to another after short periods. (example: an employee at Mc Donald’s may cook French Fires one day, fry hamburgers the other day, wait on the customer the next day and draw soft drinks the following day.)
Job Enlargement: increasing the number of tasks each employee performs (example: A sales clerk who waits on customers, finalizes sales, helps with credit applications, arranges merchandize, and records stock has an enlarged job.)
Job Characteristics:
Skill Variety: the extent to which the job requires the employees to draw from a number of different skills and abilities as well as on a range of knowledge.
Task Identity: job should have an identifiable beginning and end. The employee will be more satisfied if he is involved in a job from beginning to end.
Task Significance: involves the importance of the task. If the task is important both for the company and the society at large, the employees are likely to derive a lot more satisfaction.
Autonomy: job independence. Job satisfaction will depend on how much freedom and control do employees have, for example, to schedule their own work, make decisions, or determine the means to accomplish the objectives.
Feedback: objective information about progress and performance.
Various job characteristics lead to three critical psychological states:
Meaningfulness: comes from task significance.
Responsibility: comes from task identity, autonomy and autonomy.
Knowledge of results: comes from feedback.

Rewards: Employees often see pay as a reflection of how management views their contribution to the organization, which in turn has a bearing on job satisfaction. The companies have therefore come up with various reward programmes linked to employees’ performance such as variable pay, skill-based pay, profit sharing, gain sharing, trust pay, employee stock ownership plan etc.

Promotional avenues: Employees are likely to have low job satisfaction in case there are hardly any promotional avenues within the organization. To augment job satisfaction, a number of companies have elaborate career development programmes, succession plans, assessment centers etc.

Supervision: Supervisory styles have a direct bearing on job satisfaction. In case the supervisor is autocratic, the employees are likely to be dissatisfied. On the other hand, if the supervisor makes way for employees’ participation in decision-making, goal-setting and making action plan to accomplish a job, the employees are likely to experience far more satisfaction at the work place.
Co-workers: Nature of co-workers may also have significant bearing on employee’s job satisfaction. In case the co-workers are hostile, non-cooperative and bad mouthed, the employee might experience dissatisfaction at the workplace. On the other hand, friendly co-workers may provide a lot of job satisfaction despite the job being quite tiring and demanding. Management can take corrective measures by providing more opportunities for socialization.

Working conditions: Working condition has a modest impact on job satisfaction. If the working condition is good ( for example: clean attractive surrounding, controlled temperature, proper illumination) the employees find it easier to work. On the other hand, if the working condition is poor (for example: hot and sultry environment, noisy surrounding, unhygienic workplace, etc.) the employees find it difficult to carry out their job. These days, most of the companies are working on Quality of Work-life programmes so as to make the workplace conducive for better performance and increased job satisfaction.

Personality: Personal disposition of an employee also has a direct bearing on job satisfaction. A cynical employee would never ever experience job satisfaction where as a person with positive outlook and attitude would experience satisfaction at the workplace despite all odds.


Outcomes of Job Satisfaction

Performance: It has been generally viewed that higher job satisfaction leads to higher performance (productivity).
Turnover: Low job satisfaction leads to higher labour turnover, on the contrary, high job satisfaction leads to low labour turnover.
Absenteeism: Low job satisfaction leads to higher absenteeism, on the contrary, high job satisfaction leads to low absenteeism.

How the employees express job dissatisfaction?

Exit: leaving the organization, looking for a new job
Voice: actively and constructively attempting to improve conditions
Loyalty: passively but optimistically waiting for conditions to improve, speaking up for organization in the wake of external criticism and trusting the organization and its management to do the right thing.
Neglect: passively allowing conditions to worsen, chronic absenteeism, reduced efforts, increased error rate.