Determining why Employee Job Satisfaction is Low

by kelechichinansa2 (student)

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Course Project

Submitted by: Marvin Ibekwe

MGMT -591

Leadership and Org Behavior

Professor Brett Gordon

August 25th, 2012

Determining why Employee Job Satisfaction is Low

Job satisfaction is the most widely investigated job attitude as well as one of the most extensively researched subjects in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Many work motivation theories have represented the implied role of job satisfaction. As a result of this expansive research, job satisfaction has been linked to productivity, motivation, absenteeism, tardiness, accidents, mental, physical health, and general life satisfaction. 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. There are several misleading notions that exist about job satisfaction. One such fallacy is that a happy employee is a productive employee, which is not always the case. Research has offered little support that a happy employee is productive; furthermore, some research has suggested that causality may flow in the opposite direction, from productivity to satisfaction. Another fallacy is that pay is the most important factor in job satisfaction; however, employees are more satisfied when they enjoy the environment in which they work. An individual can have a high paying job and not be satisfied because it is boring and lacks sufficient stimulation. In fact, a low paying job can be seen as satisfying if it is adequately challenging or stimulating. There are numerous factors that must be taken into consideration when determining how satisfied an employee is with his or her job and it is not always easy to determine which factors are most important to each employee. Job satisfaction is very circumstantial and subjective for each employee and situation that is being assessed.

Americans of all ages and income brackets continue to grow increasingly unhappy at work a long term trend that should seriously concern employers, The report, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households conducted for The Conference Board by TNS, finds only 45% of those surveyed say that they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1% in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted. While overall employee satisfaction has declined to 45%, the percentage of employees satisfied with their jobs is lowest in the under 25 age group with only 35.7% satisfied. Among employees in the age group 25-34, 47.2% are satisfied; employees in the age group 35-44 scored 43.4% in job satisfaction. Employees in the 45-54 age range scored 46.8%; employees 55-64 scored 45.6% in employee satisfaction and, of those employees age 65 and over, 43.4% are satisfied. Employee satisfaction at work has decreased significantly in the past twenty years, as these figures indicate and I predict employee satisfaction will get worse in the next few years. A combination of events is creating a perfect storm affecting employee satisfaction. A generation of employees who feel entitled to employee satisfaction has entered the workforce and several generations of employees for whom work never quite fulfilled their dreams, are leaving. And, they are leaving in the worst of economic times which will affect their satisfaction with the rest of the quality of life they experience.

This downward trend in job satisfaction raises concerns about the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity, retention, creativity, risk taking, mentoring, and in overall employee motivation and interest in work. These numbers do not bode well given the multi-generational dynamics of the labor force, says Linda Barrington, managing director, Human Capital, at The Conference Board. The newest federal statistics show that baby boomers will compose a quarter of the U.S. workforce in eight years, and since 1987 we’ve watched them increasingly losing faith in the workplace. Twenty years ago, 60% of Baby Boomers were satisfied with their jobs; today only 46% are. Barrington expresses concern about the growing lack of employee satisfaction because of its potential impact on knowledge transfer to and mentoring for the next generations of employees. In this environment for employee satisfaction, it is vitally important to know which factors most affect employee satisfaction. You want to spend your time, money, and energy on programs, processes, and factors that will have a positive impact on employee satisfaction. A 2009 survey, by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) looked at 24 factors that are regularly thought to relate to employee satisfaction. The study found that employees identified these five factors as most important:

job security,
benefits (especially health care) with the importance of retirement benefits rising with the age of the employee,
compensation/pay,
opportunities to use skills and abilities, and
Feeling safe in the work environment.

The next five most important factors affecting employee satisfaction were:

the employee's relationship with his or her immediate supervisor,
management recognition of employee job performance,
communication between employees and senior management,
the work itself, and
Autonomy and independence in their job.

Based on my research, According to the National Business Research Institute, six workplace factors primarily influence employee job satisfaction: opportunity for promotion and ...

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job security,
benefits (especially health care) with the importance of retirement benefits rising with the age of the employee,
compensation/pay,
opportunities to use skills and abilities, and
Feeling safe in the work environment.

The next five most important factors affecting employee satisfaction were:

the employee's relationship with his or her immediate supervisor,
management recognition of employee job performance,
communication between employees and senior management,
the work itself, and
Autonomy and independence in their job.

Based on my research, According to the National Business Research Institute, six workplace factors primarily influence employee job satisfaction: opportunity for promotion and development; stress; effective leadership; pride in completed work; fair rewards; and adequate authority to get the job done. Managers must avoid speculating about the causes of employee satisfaction, however, even if the cause is apparently obvious. Not all employees are alike and the root cause of dissatisfaction may be something that employees are not comfortable sharing publicly. To get a true gauge of the reasons behind job dissatisfaction, the employer must obtain the information directly by surveying the workforce. If less than half of those lucky to be employed today are happy with their jobs, what does this say about the state of the American worker? According to Tuesday’s Seattle Post Intelligence article, employee dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than a generation and is due not only to wages failing to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of health care, but the fact that fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting. Does it matter that employees find their jobs interesting? Well, I contend this is extremely important because interest in the work can determine just how competitive we are as a country in the world economy. The downward trend in job satisfaction could spell trouble for the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity,” says Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. Their research, based on a survey with 5,000 U.S. households, goes on to report that a full 22 percent of respondents say they don’t expect to be in their current job in the next year. The growing dissatisfaction across and between generations is important to address because it can directly impact the quality of multi-generational knowledge transfer which is increasingly critical to effective workplace functioning. If this low rate of job satisfaction results in stifled innovation, lower productivity, and reduced multi-generational knowledge transfer, we’ve got some serious problems in the workplace. So what can be done?

Basically how it can be done is, In my opinion, it seems to me that better understanding the root of the problem is essential. For instance, this apparent downward trend has continued for the last two decades and throughout our boom and bust economic cycles. The current down economy is therefore not the heart of the problem. Though I am not an economist, I don’t believe simply adding more service type jobs to replace outsourced manufacturing jobs will resolve things. We need to leverage good old American ingenuity as well as our technical expertise and creativity to create sustainable market opportunities for new goods and services. We also need something that will ignite workers in every sector of the economy to contribute their best in order to meet the many challenges of the 21st century. With increasing terrorism, global warming, greater energy demands and other big challenges, there is no shortage of opportunities available. Government and business needs to work cooperatively to fully ignite our country again in the same way we did during World War II and for the moon shot of the last century.

No matter what market opportunities may become available to create new and better jobs, we also need to find ways to increase employee engagement and strengthen trust and respect in employer-employee relationships. And this is something that can begin immediately. The worker who feels he or she is truly the organization’s most important asset is a more satisfied worker regardless of the job. Organizations that invest in their employees today will remain competitive in the future. A meaningful investment in your employees will help bring about increased job satisfaction. Whether this means better aligning resources with tasks, providing greater guidance and support, strengthening general communication, or results based team building activities, your investment can reap bottom line business results immediately. The effects of low job satisfaction can be far reaching and this issue is of concern for small business owners as well as large companies. If employees are not happy with their jobs, several areas of their work are affected and their behavior can also affect other employees. A study published by the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health found that workers who report low job satisfaction experienced several other issues at work as a side effect. When employees are not happy with their jobs, they are much more likely to experience and report stress on the job. Workers who are satisfied or happy at work are much less likely to report feeling stressed out by their job. This is basic human nature if you are not doing something you enjoy, chances are you are going to feel dissatisfied and even little things will make you feel stressed out and unhappy. When one employee is miserable doing their job, all of the other employees they come into contact with are going to be affected by their attitude. If they see someone who is so obviously miserable, it will begin to color how they view their own jobs. Negative attitudes can spread through a workplace like wildfire and, if they are not improved, the overall morale of the employees will take a sharp decline. Low job satisfaction, coupled with low employee morale equals a lack of productivity in the workplace. Again, we have basic human nature at work. When someone is unhappy, they don't focus well and they don't pay attention to their tasks. They find hundreds of other things to do that do make them happy, all the while ignoring the job they should be doing. When one member of a team displays low productivity, it is only natural for other members of the team to feel dissatisfied as a result, and their productivity will begin to decline as well. It is a vicious cycle that is all too common. Low job satisfaction also creates high turnover rates with employees. Sooner or later, the employee is going to quit so that they can find a job they actually enjoy doing. Many industries such as food service suffer from high turnover rates and the inability to retain qualified workers. It is up to small business owners and managers to find a way to increase job satisfaction, particularly in difficult industries in which the jobs are tough and the pay is low. Employee job satisfaction has trended lower each year for twenty years. So says a recent survey contracted by The Conference Board. Employee job satisfaction is situational. Employee job satisfaction depends on your company and its practices, your expectations and needs from work, the quality of your supervision, the health of your industry, the competitiveness of the job market, the state of the economy, the success of your company, your mentor resources, and more. The variables are what make employee job satisfaction so challenging. Share what contributes to or destroys employee job satisfaction? The promotion and increment of salary do not ensure that all of the employees are satisfied in an organization. The other major factors are the staff appraisal process and the dealing of the managers with individual staff. In some cases the managers fail to adopt a professional appraisal process and respond positively to it. Beyond that, the managers cannot change their pre-occupied attitude or behaviour. Thus, they fail to take a fair appraisal process or fail to respond properly to the need of the employees. As the managers possess the authority to set the rules of the games, sometimes they are highly deviated or prejudiced for or against certain employees. Whatever, the results of the survey or appraisal say they take the decision on their own way. Sometimes the managers want to establish a power relationship to govern the organization and knowingly or unknowingly they use some trustee's information’s for or against some employee. The trustees may not necessarily provide the right information as expected.

Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work. That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49% of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs. The drop in workers' happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which has made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades. If the job satisfaction trend is not reversed, economists say, it could stifle innovation and hurt America's competitiveness and productivity. And it could make unhappy older workers less inclined to take the time to share their knowledge and skills with younger workers. When the Conference Board's first survey was conducted in 1987, most workers 61% said they were happy in their jobs. The survey of 5,000 households was conducted for the Conference Board by TNS, a global market research company. One clue that may explain workers' growing dissatisfaction: Only 51% now find their jobs interesting another low in the survey's 22 years. In 1987, nearly 70% said they were interested in their work. Workers who find their jobs interesting are more likely to be innovative and to take the calculated risks and the initiative that drive productivity and contribute to economic growth, Barrington says. What's really disturbing about growing job dissatisfaction is the way it can play into the competitive nature of the U.S. workforce down the road and on the growth of the U.S. economy all in a negative way," says Lynn Franco, another author of the report and director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center. Conference Board officials and outside economists suggested that weak wage growth helps explain why workers' unhappiness has been rising for more than 20 years. After growing in the 1980s and 1990s, average household incomes adjusted for inflation have been shrinking since 2000.

Also, compared with 1980, three times as many workers contribute to the cost of their health insurance and those contributions have gone up. The average employee contribution for single-coverage medical care benefits rose from $48 a month to $76 a month between 1999 and 2006. Workers under 25 expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction. Roughly 64% of workers under 25 say they are unhappy in their jobs. The recession has been especially hard on young workers, who face fewer opportunities now and lower wages, some analysts say. The most satisfied are those ages 25 to 34, who may see some opportunities for upward mobility as baby boomers retire. Around 47% of workers 25 to 34 say they are happy in their jobs. In organizational behavioral research, job satisfaction is the most frequently studied variable . Many researchers claim that job satisfaction can be formally defined "as the degree to which individuals feel positively and/or negatively about their jobs". When the desired expectations of employees are met, they will experience the feeling of accomplishment and therefore can determine their satisfaction. Gordon. J. R claims that job satisfaction occurs when a job meets the expectations, values and standards of an individual and will influence their commitment and performance. So from here, it is how an organization gets satisfied their workers in order to get their commitment to performed well.
According to Robbins and Judge, job satisfaction describes a positive feeling about a job, resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive feelings about his or her job, while an unsatisfied person holds negative feelings. Job satisfaction is a pleasurable positive state resulting from one's job and job experience. According to Jain, Jabeen, Mishra & Gupta individuals show pleasurable positive attitudes when they are satisfied with their job. There are many of job satisfaction theories in organizational studies. Among those theories, the most popular theories that have always been referred are Herzberg's two factors theory and Maslow's Theory of Needs. Herzberg's theory divided the factors based on two basis type of needs; 1) the need for psychological growth or motivating factors and 2) the need to avoid pain or hygiene factors. Schermerhorn et al. , Frederick Herzberg theorized that employee satisfaction depends on two sets of issues, which are hygiene issue and motivator issue. Whereby according to Maslow's Theory of Needs, human needs are never satisfied and they are always craving for more. This is due to after one's need to be fulfilled; other needs will emerge. Maslow divided human needs into five which are: physiology, safety, belongingness and love, esteem and self-actualization. Physical needs are the base from the hierarchy. It includes the basic human needs such as the need for air, water, food, exercise and freedom form diseases. It is commonly achieve by the human being. Once this basic is achieved, then they will go for the other level which is the security. This level includes the need of safety, shelter and stability. In term of the working environment, it means that an employee may demand for the job security, they can have a stabile job, being treated fairly and have a good pay for their job. The third phase is the social, it includes the need of being loves, and they experience the feeling of belonging and inclusion. In the work place, the employee need to feel the sense of belonging and acceptance, once they have this feeling, it helps them to achieve the satisfaction on this level. Let say one's cannot fulfill this level, for example maybe he or she facing problem in their marriage; it will lead to fail on this level. After fulfill this level, it comes to another level which is the ego or known as self-esteem and follow by the highest level which is the self-actualization.

The reason why job satisfaction been study due to it bring impact to the organization. Robbins and Judge there are consequences when employees like their jobs or dislike. It divides into two dimensions: constructive or destructive and active or passive. There are four responses which include exit, voice, loyalty and neglect. Exit and neglect are meant for destructive behavior however voice and loyalty is for constructive behavior. Constructive or also known as active behavior defined as a set of action that employee attempt to improve the situation or their performance. Exit response involves directing behavior to the organization such as resigning or turnover. Neglect response involves passively behavior that allowing condition to worst such as absenteeism or lateness and reduce productivity. This study will focus on the destructive behavior which includes the exit response and neglect response. Destructive behavior also defined as withdrawal behavior. According to Robbins and Judge Withdrawal behavior is a set of actions that employees perform to avoid the work situation and this behavior may result an employee to quit in the organization

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