Factors of Job Satisfaction

Unit 2- What Factors Are Most Important to Your Job Satisfaction?

Kaplan University
School of Business and Management
MT302 Organizational Behavior
Author: Kedner Poux
Professor: Sapham Perez
Date: October 27, 2012

Everyone has their own way to express their satisfaction about their employee, however, job Satisfaction, according to Williams J., is defined as "the extent to which people like (satisfaction) or dislike (dissatisfaction) their jobs" (Spector, 1997, p. 2). This definition suggests job satisfaction is a general or global affective reaction that individuals hold about their job. However, according to Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A Judge, job satisfaction is defined as a positive feeling about ones job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. There are so many factors that can explain how much people feel about their job and why they are changing jobs over and over. Between all of those factors the ones that I chose are the following starting from the highest level to the lowest one: job security, opportunities to use skills and abilities, safety in the work environment, career advancement opportunities and Benefits. How those factors become very important for my job satisfaction?
Job security is the primary factor that people are looking for when applying for jobs. Everyone wants to be secured about their jobs; they want to make sure this is a job that they can count on even if the company does not pay too much but they job is safe they don’t have to worry about losing it at any time or their job is moving anywhere, they just to have a job that is stable. However, the Global Workforce Study of 20,000 employees, by professional services company Towers Watson, found that, when asked to rate what is most important for them in their jobs, 81% of employees said stability and security was the most crucial aspect (Personnel Today, Tuesday 16th March, 2010). But only 43% believed their current organisation was able to offer a secure and stable position. It is a desire for everyone to have a job stable and secure so they don’t have to work too many jobs at once during their working life. According to the survey 72%of respondents want to work for only one to three organizations throughout their careers and about 35% of them are looking to work for only one company. Nick Tatchell, a senior consultant at Towers Watson, told Personnel Today: "The recession has reminded people of some of the fundamentals of what they desire from work, and that is security and stability.
One other option that I considered as a second most important factor of job satisfaction is “Opportunities to use skills and abilities”. According to Wikipedia, employability refers to person’s capability for gaining and maintaining employment (Hillage and Pollard, 1998). For individuals, employability depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) they possess, the way they present those assets to employers, and the context (e.g. personal circumstances and labor market environment) within which they seek work (Hind and Moss, 2011). As such employability is affected by both supply-side and demand-side factors which are often outside of an individual 's control. However, lot of people when looking for job, for example graduate or vocational students or professional, they are looking for companies that willing to hire them and give them the opportunity to use their skills and their knowledge’s which can also allow to this employee to make their career with this organization or to get as much as knowledge they can in order to get a better job in the future. According to SHRM (Society for human resource management) 2012 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement “Sixty-three (63%) percent of employees rated opportunities to use their skills and abilities at work as the most important contributor to their job satisfaction, displacing job security for the number one spot”. Employees are very satisfied with their employers when they feel they have used their skills in order to help their organization to be successful and also they are satisfied with the jobs they have done for this organization. Not only Opportunities to Use Skills and Abilities is considering as a second most important factor in job satisfaction but also safety in the work environment is another factor that plays a very important role into a lot of people when they are looking for jobs. Lot of people before they look for job with an organization they try to find out a lot about them and more precisely if the workplace is safe enough to works by asking all those types of questions such as” do they follow all the OSHA safety rules, what types of safety condition they have in order to keep everyone safe against violence. According to SHRM research, “27% of Human Resources professionals reported that their current organization experienced an incident of workplace violence within the past five years; 15% indicated that incidents of violence had increased in frequency” (SHRM 2012 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement). However most of women think safety into the workplace is considered as one of the very most important factor when it is come to job satisfaction.
According to Examiner.com in one of the its article from society and culture by Sharalyn Hartwell,” Career advancement opportunities, not flexible schedules, are the highest motivating factors for Generation Y in the workplace, according to study conducted by AchieveGlobal, a consulting firm which implements and researches training programs for corporations worldwide. Lot of people when looking for job the first thing they have in mind is what types of careers opportunities that such and such employer is giving in order to get a job with them, they are looking for that in order to help them in their career for their future. Thirty-seven percent of Gen Y’ers said career advancement was their most important goal, or the factor that motivated them the most at work, while 37 percent of Baby Boomers said “Flexibility in my schedule/time off to do the things I enjoy outside of work” was the most motivating factor. These results make sense. Gen Y is in the building phase of their careers and Baby Boomers are getting ready for retirement.
The fifth but not the last factor that has a lot of importance in job satisfaction is: the Benefits. It is considered one of the most important factor into anyone career when looking for job especially the single parents because health insurance is becoming so expensive, they have to look for organization that offers those benefits in order to keep their family in good health, such as health care, paid time off, and so one. According to a SHRM news report on June 29, 2010, it said when it comes to benefits, health care reigns supreme, according to employees and HR professionals, though paid time off was a close second. However, even though 65% of employees said such benefits were “very important,” just 38% said they were “very satisfied” with the health care/medical benefits provided by their employer. By comparison, 54% of employees said they were very satisfied with paid time off benefits.
Job satisfaction, according to Brian Francis Redmond, is considered as one of the most widely investigated job attitude as well as one of the most extensively researched subjects in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (Judge & Church, 2000). Many work motivation theories have represented the implied role of job satisfaction. In addition, many work satisfaction theories have tried to explain job satisfaction and its influence, such as: Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs, Hertzberg’s (1968) Two-Factor (Motivator-Hygiene) Theory, Adam’s (1965) Equity Theory, Porter and Lawler’s (1968) modified version of Vroom’s (1964) VIE Model, Locke’s (1969) Discrepancy Theory, Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) Job Characteristics Model, Locke’s (1976) Range of Affect Theory, Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory, and Landy’s (1978) Opponent Process Theory. As a result of this research, job satisfaction has been linked to productivity, motivation, absenteeism/tardiness, accidents, mental/physical health, and general life satisfaction (Landy, 1978). A common idea of the research has been that, to some extent, the emotional state of an individual is affected by interactions with their work environment. People identify themselves by their profession, such as a doctor, lawyer, or teacher. A person’s individual well-being at work, therefore, is a very significant aspect of research (Judge & Klinger, 2007). However, one of the most widely accepted explanation of job satisfaction was presented by Locke (1976), who defined job satisfaction as “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” (p. 1304). Additionally, job satisfaction has emotional, cognitive and behavioral components (Bernstein & Nash, 2008.
And finally job satisfaction is categorized into two (2) types which are based on the level of employee’s feeling based on their job. The first, and most studied, is global job satisfaction, which refers to employees ' overall feelings about their jobs (Mueller & Kim, 2008). The second is job facet satisfaction, which refers to feelings about specific job aspects, such as salary, benefits, and the quality of relationships with one 's co-workers (Mueller & Kim, 2008)

References Pages

1- Williams, J. (2004). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment, a Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia entry. 2- Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A Judge, 15th edition Organizational Behavior 3- Personnel Today, Tuesday16th march, 2010 Jobs security tops employee wish-list during recession. (http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/16/03/2010/54845/job-security-tops-employee-wish-lists-during-recession.htm). 4- Examiner.com by Hartwell, January 4th, 2010 Gen Y most motivated by career advancement opportunities. 5- Brian Francis Redmond, on Mar 30, 2012 Work attitude and job motivation

References: Pages 1- Williams, J. (2004). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment, a Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia entry. 2- Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A Judge, 15th edition Organizational Behavior 3- Personnel Today, Tuesday16th march, 2010 Jobs security tops employee wish-list during recession. (http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/16/03/2010/54845/job-security-tops-employee-wish-lists-during-recession.htm). 4- Examiner.com by Hartwell, January 4th, 2010 Gen Y most motivated by career advancement opportunities. 5- Brian Francis Redmond, on Mar 30, 2012 Work attitude and job motivation