JOB SATISFACTION
Introduction
Job satisfaction is the overall attitude of liking or disliking a job. It is a significant aspect that is essential for career development as well as the success of an organization. But employee satisfaction with the job that they do is not something that organizations can predict. Levels of employee dissatisfaction exists in many organizations. Employees typically experience a lack of job satisfaction when (1) they don’t receive the outcomes they want, (2) they receive outcomes they don’t want (like more work), or (3) they don’t find their work rewarding enough. Employees are particularly vulnerable to this problem during times of change, because the number and types of rewards that organizations in transition can offer are frequently limited or curtailed (1999). However, another most important factor for job dissatisfaction, and one which sometimes organizations fail to consider is the suitability of an employee for the job. Many organizations hire people without detailed emphasis on the suitability of the applicant to the organization or the job. An applicant could be very intelligent yet not suited for the job. Good people could make bad jobs. Thus there is a need for companies to come up with a well organized selection program so that they will hire the right people and in the long run save the company from high turnovers and management problems brought about by employees who do not fit in the organization.
Role of Employee Selection and Hiring in Job Satisfaction
The main objective of a good employee selection and hiring procedure is to acquire people who possess the ability and competence to accomplish successfully the duties and responsibilities not only of the job to be filled but also of the potential to grow with the family. And to be able to grow with the company, an employee has to be happy and satisfied with his or her work. The probability of job satisfaction of an individual within an organization is therefore a factor that can be gauged even at the selection and hiring stage.
The success of any organization, large or small, chiefly depends on the ability and efficiency of the persons in its rolls. People are hired to do jobs to attain the objectives of the organization. People make use of money, materials, and machines to produce goods and render services. People with specialized knowledge and skills are needed to render services.
People who possess the right qualifications for their jobs also require less supervision, give better work performance, get along better with fellow employees, and are happier in their jobs than those who lack the proper qualifications. When people are interested in what they do, they make efforts to get better at it (2000). No job is performed in a static situation. Additionally, those who have the right qualifications for the job are less likely to present problems to the management in the long run.
Among the many hiring practices and methods that are used by companies today are interviews and tests. Hundreds of interview types and tests are available today for the hiring process of new employees. Not all of these have satisfactory reliability and validity, and very few have been related to job success satisfactorily. Tests results can rarely be transferred from company to company but must be tailor-made. Even when the tests fit the company, perfect results cannot be expected and some mistakes will be made. The best that can be hopes, at this hiring stage, is that selections guided by test results will include fewer mistakes than selection made otherwise.
The challenge here is to look for applicants who through interviews and tests will assure the selecting committee that they can handle the job at present but at the same time also show that they are equipped to handle and face tomorrow’s challenges and responsibilities.
Importance of Well Organized Selection Program
The hiring practices and methods of some companies are so haphazard that they may be the root cause of many problems involving personnel. Undoubtedly, there is a considerable unnecessary motion and failure in trying to get the worker best suited to a job. It is therefore good personnel policy to attract and hire for every vacant position those who possess the ability, personality, and potential to grow with the company and to develop them into efficient, loyal, and satisfied employees. Finding the right person for a job and finding the right job for a person who is available are essential to sound employee selection and placement. The objective of a well organized employee selection program is to hire the best qualified candidate or employee available for the position to be filled. To the extent that the company is able to achieve this objective the company will likely attain high productivity and the employee will most likely find his or her work satisfying and rewarding.
Differences of People
People have varying degrees of intelligence, attitudes, aptitudes, and abilities. They also differ in physical characteristics and in their goals. When an applicant is hired to do a job that does not satisfy his or her needs for growth and development, he or she becomes dissatisfied. The individual will either leave the company or work inefficiently and becomes a discipline-problem employee unless he or she is transferred to a more suitable or satisfying job.
Good employee selection aims to discover these differences and match people with jobs (2003). Persons are influenced by heredity, education and economic background, ideologies, work experiences, habits, aptitudes, and learning. Some are fast, skillful, and adept at certain kinds of work. Others are slow, lazy and blundering. Some have aptitudes and skills for particular types of work. Some have great potential abilities for certain kinds of jobs. Those who lack the necessary work interest, aptitudes, and ability to learn do not develop into skilled, competent workers. In effect, this can make the employee unhappy and dissatisfied with the job. Some individuals have shortcomings in personality and temperament which render them unfit to team up with other workers. Others may be deficient in certain traits but excellent in others. These basic facts of individual differences must be fully considered for a more efficient personnel selection procedure.
However, great importance in the selection of which applicants to hire is given primarily to the applicant’s ability to learn, the applicant’s values, and the applicant’s cognitive ability. An applicant’s ability to learn and learn quickly becomes critical to his or her success since organizational impatience is considered a by-product of the short-term mentality that plagues most of society today. The importance of the applicant’s values is reflected in that there must be a commonality of conviction between the applicant’s personal values and the values cherished by the management and organization. Lastly, an applicant’s cognitive ability is important, most especially what he or she has learned from previous mistakes ( 2000).
Differences of Jobs
Some jobs are simple while others are technical or complex. Certain jobs require specialized training and skill of some kind. Others require relatively little training, experience, or physical and mental effort. Still, other jobs require much energy and drive, highly specialized training, leadership qualities, or vast experience. The primary aim of personnel selection is to seek out and hire the individual who possesses the qualifications and personal qualities that will match the requirements of the job.
Job Enrichment
Job enlargement or job enrichment is the term given to the reversal of a job specialization trend. The motive is to make jobs more interesting and promote job satisfaction by adding variety. Although the implementation of this goal may seem contrary to motion economy, it need not be. Adding variety to a job does not mean adding unnecessary motions. The enrichment is more mental than motor. Sequential tasks performed by, say, two or three workers can be grouped so that each worker performs all the tasks. The regrouping of jobs allows method changes that might otherwise be difficult to initiate. Job enrichment, if properly done, could provide opportunities for employees to be interested and satisfied with what they do.
Employee Morale and Motivation
The subject of morale has to be discussed in order to gain a clearer view of problems related to it and to appreciate its role in employee satisfaction and how it enhances productivity. Morale is the mental attitude which makes the individual perform his or her work either willingly and enthusiastically or poorly and reluctantly. Employee morale is an attitude, a state of mind, intangible but manifested by the employee’s manner and reactions to his or her job, working conditions, the company policies and programs, fellow workers, supervisors, compensation, opportunities for advancement, and the general environment. Good employee morale cannot be achieved through salary or wage alone but also through cordial and happy relationships, wholesome working conditions, desirable working environment, and proper attitude.
The word “motivation” is derived from the word “motivate” which means to move, impel, or induce to act to satisfy a need or want ( 1999). The best form of motivation is self-motivation with proper attitudes toward his or her work, co-workers and the management because this comes from within the individual. An individual’s own motivators are his or her own personal drives to achieve his ambition and goals. The company may provide the necessary motivations such as good pay, excellent benefits, and good environment but if he or she lacks personal drive, or the will to forge ahead, no amount of motivation will make him strive to great achievement. The employee needs personal initiative and motivation to achieve superior performance. Management should develop in the employees good work attitudes and proper behavior through seminars, conferences, workshops, and consultations.
The job satisfaction of an employee could therefore be attributed to the level of morale and motivation that is present in the employee. But not everyone aggress with the morale-building claims of the proponents of motivational advantages of job enrichment, but from a methods-improvement viewpoint it is generally agreed that a properly designed program can emphasize craftsmanship and improve worker identification with his or her work while maintaining or even improving overall job efficiency. The concepts of work simplification have also been around a long time. Formal work simplification programs are of a more recent vintage. Many of the contemporary programs are conducted by agencies outside the organization or are abetted by services brought in to freshen interest. The typical aims of the programs are still to effect changes and to improve working methods and job satisfaction of employees, although some agendas are designed to improve managerial decisions.
Job Feedback
Feedback is the information people receive about their performance. It conveys an evaluation about the quality of their performance behaviors. Giving feedback is the activity of providing information to staff members about their performance on job expectations ( 2003). A feedback could be good or bad, depending on the quality of work done by the employee. A desirable employee, who accepts criticisms as part of growth and development within the job, will look at a mistake as feedback rather than as a failure, regard every job assignment as developmental, and seek out challenging opportunities where the pressure to learn will force them to grow professionally and stretch their capabilities ( 2000).
Personal Job Satisfaction based on the given questionnaire
After taking the test that measured job satisfaction, a higher score was obtained. This result indicates being fairly satisfied with the present job, although not completely satisfied. This means that although the author is satisfied with the job, some room for improvement is still needed. Perhaps the author is in an environment where the qualifications for the job matched the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the author.
A critical comment will be voiced out on one of the questions presented in the questionnaire. This is on the question – Most days I am enthusiastic about my work. The answer provided to this question is “Agree.” Note that there is still an answer that has a higher degree or score – “Strongly Agree.” The reason why the superlative was not chosen as an answer is because the author feels that although there is enthusiasm for work on the part of the worker, this is not constant and is affected by many factors that mostly relates about work, work environment, and working conditions. Certain events in the workplace could trigger lack of enthusiasm on the part of the worker even if he or she is fit for the job and loves the job. These factors or events affecting a worker’s job enthusiasm could be the working condition of the office, co-workers, forms of discrimination, wage and compensation, or policies and programs of the organization.
4. What does the Research Evidence Indicate are the Major Effects of Job Satisfaction on Measures of Worker (and Student) Performance?
Most researches indicate that when an employee is satisfied with his or her job, then he is likely to perform better than those who are not happy or satisfied with their jobs. Jobs differ and require a wide variety of skills, knowledge and ability. Workers also differ from one another in many ways. If a person is assigned to a job to which his ability, character, and temperament are not suited, then he or she is likely to be unsatisfied with the job and fail, and thereby create a problem for management (2002). On the other hand, those who are suited for the job are more likely to be satisfied in the job and in effect work efficiently and succeed.
Conclusion
The core values of an organization help to identify what kind of the organization is in relation to other organizations. They also give a general understanding of the member characteristics of the organization to the outsiders. In line with this, the core values of an organization also reflect that of their employees. Thus, one could say that employees who do not mirror the core values of an organization are less likely to be satisfied with their work and with the organization.
However, it is not easy to be able to select correctly which employees will be happy and satisfied with their jobs. A company which must meet competition and maintain its leadership in the field cannot leave the hiring and selection of its workers to chance. It needs people who can contribute to the company’s business – people with progressive ideas for new products, services, or methods. Employees with the right qualifications for a job are more economical for the company in the long run because they learn faster and are less costly to train. They are also far less likely to do damage to the company’s equipment, customers, publics, and corporate image.
Thus any extra effort and expense required to improve the process of selection will more than pay for itself by having more efficient employees on the company rolls and less employee dissatisfaction to deal with in the long run. Fortunately, through the use of scientific recruitment and selection, techniques, much can be done to reduce, if not wholly eliminate, errors in the choice of employees.
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