Imagine having to show up to your work every day, unhappy and unmotivated because you are unsatisfied with the job. On the other hand, imagine feeling motivated to get to your job and start working because you are fond of what you do. Being satisfied with a job is crucial for every working person. It changes your mindset, mood, and approach to the tasks given to you. Several components in your job contribute to job satisfaction, and many theories help explain job satisfaction. Read along to familiarize yourself with these topics.
Job Satisfaction Definition
Not everyone can truthfully say that they are satisfied with their job. Job satisfaction depends on psychological, physiological, and environmental circumstances.
Job satisfaction is the content experienced by employees at their job. It is the positive response employees experience while doing their job.
If employees are satisfied with their jobs, they feel motivated and happy. Employees feel satisfied when they gain what they have been hoping for from the job. This could include career growth, a better salary, a good working environment, etc.
Components of Job Satisfaction
People expect certain benefits or outcomes from their jobs. These are the components that form the basis of job satisfaction. The three job satisfaction components are - the evaluative component, the cognitive component, and the affective component.
Components of Job Satisfaction: Evaluative Component
How employees feel about their employer overall is the evaluative component of job satisfaction. They can either like the organization, dislike it, or even have mixed feelings about it. When someone asks you, "How satisfied are you at your job?" your response is the summation of how you feel about various aspects of the organization. It is the overall opinion you have about the organization.
Components of Job Satisfaction: Cognitive Component
The cognitive component of job satisfaction considers the employee's beliefs and expectations. Whether employees feel that their work is respectable, rewarding, or challenging is all part of the cognitive component of job satisfaction.
Components of Job Satisfaction: Affective Component
How an organization makes its employees feel is known as the affective component. Positive feedback and situations can make an employee feel welcome, whereas negative feedback and situations can affect their self-worth and make them feel invalidated.
Job Satisfaction Factors
The factors that bring satisfaction to an employee range from the job conditions to the company's corporate social responsibility policies. The four main factors that affect job satisfaction are job conditions, personality, pay, and corporate social responsibility.
Job Satisfaction Factors: Job Conditions
Job conditions play a crucial role in influencing the job satisfaction of employees. Many elements contribute to the job's conditions. The freedom employees experience in communicating with their manager adds to their job satisfaction. A company that provides its employees with the right training, types of equipment, freedom, and comfort also contributes to their satisfaction at the workplace. How co-workers interact with each other, take responsibility for their actions, and make others feel are important elements that constitute a job condition.
Job Satisfaction Factors: Personality
An employee's personality influences the extent of satisfaction they gain from their job. A person's CSE or core self-evaluation ultimately decides their satisfaction level. An employee with a positive CSE - someone who believes in their competence and self-worth, has more job satisfaction than people with a negative CSE.
Job Satisfaction Factors: Pay
The monetary factor of a job undoubtedly plays a role in job satisfaction. That money will bring employee satisfaction until a certain point. Once they can afford a comfortable lifestyle, money cannot proportionally motivate or satisfy an employee with a pay increase.
Job Satisfaction Factors: Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a factor that can increase job satisfaction when done right. People are more satisfied with companies that perform some acts of social responsibility. When a company's CSR policy aligns with employees' ideas of social responsibility, they feel highly satisfied. It helps them feel that they are giving back to the planet.
Job Satisfaction Theory
Various job satisfaction theories will help in understanding the influences of job satisfaction. They help improve conditions that enhance satisfaction at the workplace and understand what employees need to be satisfied.
The four main theories that help understand job satisfaction are Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the motivation-hygiene theory, the job characteristics model, and the dispositional approach.
Job Satisfaction Theory: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is designed as a pyramid to show that fulfilling people's lower levels of needs helps them move up the pyramid.
The pyramid starts at the base with physiological needs. Moving up the pyramid, people have safety needs, the need to feel a sense of love and belonging, and esteem needs. The top of the pyramid consists of self-actualization - the last category of needs.
An organization can help fulfill its employees' physiological needs by providing facilities like a vending machine or mini kitchen and benefits like health support, salary, and monetary and non-monetary benefits.
Once the physiological needs of employees are fulfilled, they seek safety needs from the job. It can be provided by helping them feel safe at the workplace. A secure and positive work environment will help organizations achieve this.
A manager's and co-workers' appreciation can help employees feel a sense of love and belonging - the next level in the hierarchy of needs.
To feel esteemed, the employee must believe that their actions contribute to the company's success and feel like their career is growing. Achieving the goal of self-actualization requires employees to feel they have maximized their efforts. It helps them feel motivated and empowered, finally resulting in job satisfaction.
Job Satisfaction Theory: Motivation - Hygiene Theory
According to Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory, motivation and hygiene are the two main factors that drive employee satisfaction.
Motivation leads to satisfaction, while hygiene reduces dissatisfaction.
Motivators, or satisfiers, improve job satisfaction. Factors that motivate people are performance and achievement, recognition, job status, responsibility, work, personal growth, and advancement opportunities. In the workplace, motivation factors need to be improved.
Low salaries, poor working conditions, poor workspace, unhealthy or toxic relationships with the supervisor and colleagues, and low supervision quality at a workplace with high politics and rules can act as dissatisfiers. Unimproved conditions will result in dissatisfied employees.
Job Satisfaction Theory: Job Characteristics Model
Hackman and Oldham designed the job characteristics model in 1976. This model helps employers enrich their employees' work and make it more engaging and interesting. According to the model, the five characteristics - skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback - can be adjusted to make work more engaging, motivating, and satisfying.
Employees can experience meaningful work through skill variety, task identity, and task significance. The autonomy of work makes employees feel responsible for their work's outcomes. Feedback from the job helps employees understand the effect of their work. It will help them make changes if needed.
These psychological states lead to high internal motivation, high-quality work performance, high work and job satisfaction, and low absenteeism and turnover.
Job Satisfaction Theory: Dispositional Approach
Staw, Bell and Clausen developed the dispositional theory or trial theory. It focused on the employee's disposition. They pointed out that an individual's disposition affects their job satisfaction. It is because what one employee perceives as a positive experience might not be conceived the same way by another employee.
For example, an office with open space is appreciated by an extroverted person, whereas a more introverted person might prefer a cubicle with their own space to work.
Job Satisfaction Examples
Employees consider a job satisfying when it aligns with their goals and expectations. They want it to be fulfilling, challenging, and fun. Let's take a look at different examples that display job satisfaction.
- Location: A person who works at a lively and beautiful location close to their home, with an urban office building, will be more satisfied at their job than someone who has to travel hours to get to their office in an unpleasant surrounding.
- Culture: Culture affects the job satisfaction of an employee. If the culture - the communication flow, power difference, freedom of expression, etc. - aligns with the habits and expectations of the employee, it increases the chances of job satisfaction.
- Tasks: If the daily tasks are challenging and different, employees feel rewarded after accomplishing them. It makes the job more interesting than when employees perform mundane tasks, giving them a sense of satisfaction.
- Employee Relations: If employees have healthy relationships and trust in themselves, it leads to a happy and calm working atmosphere. It contributes to job satisfaction.
Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
So, what are the benefits of job satisfaction?
- Productivity - satisfied employees typically perform better and generate more output.
- Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) - employees experiencing job satisfaction tend to be more helpful and positive. They speak highly about their organization, are willing to help others, and exceed expectations.
- Satisfied customers - employees can only provide their customers with the best service when they are satisfied with their job. Therefore, satisfied employee equals satisfied customers.
- Satisfying life - for most people, their job plays a critical role in their life, as they spend the majority of their time doing it. Hence, their overall happiness can depend on whether they are satisfied with their job or not.
Job Satisfaction - Key takeaways
- Job satisfaction is the contempt experienced by employees at their job. It is the positive response employees experience while doing their job.
- There are three job satisfaction components: the evaluative component, the cognitive component, and the affective component.
- The four main factors that affect job satisfaction are job conditions, personality, pay, and corporate social responsibility.
- The four main theories that help in understanding job satisfaction are Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the Motivation-Hygiene Theory, the Job Characteristics Model, and the Dispositional approach.
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