Author: Rashmi Kumari

What is Job Satisfaction?

Job satisfaction is the level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her job. This feeling is mainly based on an individual’s perception of satisfaction. Job satisfaction can be influenced by a person’s ability to complete required tasks, the level of communication in an organization, and the way management treats employees.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Confucius

Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction

An employee’s overall satisfaction with his job is the result of a combination of factors — and financial compensation is only one of them. Management’s role in enhancing employees’ job satisfaction is to make sure the work environment is positive, morale is high and employees have the resources they need to accomplish the tasks they have been assigned.

• Working Conditions

Because employees spend so much time in their work environment each week, it’s important for companies to try to optimize working conditions. Such things as providing spacious work areas rather than cramped ones, adequate lighting and comfortable work stations contribute to favorable work conditions. Providing productivity tools such as upgraded information technology to help employees accomplish tasks more efficiently contributes to job satisfaction as well.

• Opportunity for Advancement

Employees are more satisfied with their current job if they see a path available to move up the ranks in the company and be given more responsibility and along with it higher compensation. Many companies encourage employees to acquire more advanced skills that will lead to the chance of promotion. Companies often pay the cost of tuition for employees taking university courses, for example. During an employee’s annual performance review, a supervisor should map out a path showing her what she needs to accomplish and what new skills she needs to develop in order to be on a track to advancement within the organization.

• Workload and Stress Level

Dealing with a workload that is far too heavy and deadlines that are impossible to reach can cause job satisfaction to erode for even the most dedicated employee. Falling short of deadlines results in conflict between employees and supervisors and raises the stress level of the workplace. Many times, this environment is caused by ineffective management and poor planning. The office operates in a crisis mode because supervisors don’t allow enough time for employees to perform their assigned tasks effectively or because staff levels are inadequate.

• Respect from Co-Workers

Employees seek to be treated with respect by those they work with. A hostile work environment — with rude or unpleasant co-workers — is one that usually has lower job satisfaction. Managers need to step in and mediate conflicts before they escalate into more serious problems requiring disciplinary action. Employees may need to be reminded what behaviors are considered inappropriate when interacting with co-workers.

• Relationship with Supervisors

Effective managers know their employees need recognition and praise for their efforts and accomplishments. Employees also need to know their supervisor’s door is always open for them to discuss any concerns they have that are affecting their ability to do their jobs effectively and impeding their satisfaction at the office.

• Financial Rewards

Job satisfaction is impacted by an employee’s views about the fairness of the company wage scale as well as the current compensation she may be receiving. Companies need to have a mechanism in place to evaluate employee performance and provide salary increases to top performers. Opportunities to earn special incentives, such as bonuses, extra paid time off or vacations, also bring excitement and higher job satisfaction to the workplace.

Therefore, the employer should tell employees early and often that it is the employees’ responsibility to recognize and pursue their own career contentment.  Employers’ emphasis should be on matching employees with meaningful work. Employees who learn to take charge of their own happiness at work will be highly motivated. Satisfied employees will stay with the company for a relatively long period. Thus, they must concentrate on removing dissatisfies from the workplace to enable employees to get on with their own satisfaction in an environment. Managers must concentrate on employing the right people for the organization in order to maximize on the possibility that employees will be satisfied.

Importance of Job satisfaction

Job satisfaction is a matter of great significance for employers. 

• Lower staff turnover
• Higher productivity
• Reduction in conflicts and complaints
• Punctuality (reduced lateness)
• Better worked morale

Job satisfaction and productivity

In the right conditions and settings, job satisfaction can to a great degree lead to higher productivity. If employees feel that their jobs are fun and interesting, they will be more willing to give extra effort at work for the benefit of the whole organization. Instead if employees have the feeling that their occupations are meaningless and boring, they will have a negative attitude which will definitely lead to a decline in productivity.

Job satisfaction helps to create a better working environment

When employees are enjoying a higher degree of job satisfaction they tend to be more helpful and friendly with their colleagues at work. This helps to promote teamwork where sharing of information and knowledge is enhanced. Moreover studies have shown that job satisfaction among employees may lead to a better and safer working environment with lesser negative conflicts which otherwise would impede the smooth running of the organization.

Job satisfaction and absenteeism and turnover

High rate of turnover has always been a great problem to many organizations. It obviously results in loss of potentials and talents and causes huge losses in terms of additional costs. According to Sattler and Mullen, generally, the more productive people are, the more satisfied they tend to be and when employees feel satisfied they are less likely to leave the organization.

Employee satisfaction can lead to customer satisfaction

When our staff is happy, our customers will be too. At the heart of these endeavors is a strong belief that today’s employee satisfaction, loyalty and commitment influence tomorrow’s customer satisfaction, loyalty and commitment-and, ultimately, the organization’s profit and growth.

In this article, you’ll learn about Key Elements of Organizational Behaviour such as People, Structure, Technology, Environment and more.

The key elements of organizational behaviour are people, structure technology and the environment in which the organizations operates. When people join together in an organisation to accomplish an objective, some kind of structure is required. People also use technology to help get the job done, so there is an interaction of people, structure and the technology. In addition, these elements are influenced by the external environment, and they influence it.

Key Elements of Organizational Behaviour

Each of the four elements of organizational behaviour will be considered briefly.

People

People make up the internal social system of the organisation. They consist of individuals and groups. There are formal and informal groups. Groups are dynamic. They form, change and disband. Organizations exist to serve people, rather than people existing to serve organizations.

Structure

Structure defines the formal relationships of people in organisations. Different jobs are required to accomplish all of an organisation’s activities. There are managers and employees, accountants and assemblers. These people have to be related in some structural way so that their work can be effectively co-ordinated. These relationships create complex problems of cooperation, negotiation and decision-making.

Technology

Technology provides the resources with which people work and affects the tasks that they perform. The technology used has a significant influence in working relationships. The great benefit of technology is that it allows people to do more and better work, but it also restricts people in various ways. It has costs as well as benefits.

Environment

All organizations operate within an external environment A single organisation does not exist alone. It is part of a larger system that contains many other elements such as Govt., the family, and other organizations. 

All of these mutually influence each other in a complex system that creates a context for a group of people. Individual organizations, such as factory or a school, cannot escape being influenced by this external environment. It influences the attitudes of people, affects working conditions, and provides competition for resources and power. It must be considered in the study of human behaviour in organizations.

In this article, you’ll learn about approaches to Organizational Behaviour. Studying approaches to organizational behavior is valuable for several reasons, as it provides insights into understanding, managing, and improving the dynamics within an organization.

Organizational Behavior relates to the relationship between employees and the employer in an organization.

Both are working towards the realization of the goals and objectives of any organization, and a close and fruitful coordination between the two is one of the major factors towards this realization.

Organizational behavior approaches are a result of the research done by experts in this field.

There are 5 Approaches to Organizational Behaviour

1. Human resources (supportive) approach 

The human resources approach is developmental. It is concerned with the growth and development of people towards higher levels of competency, creativity, and fulfillment because people are the central resource in any organisation and any society. The nature of the human resources approach can be understood by comparing it with the traditional management approach in the early 1900s.

In the traditional approach, managers decided what should be done and management was directive and controlling. The human resources approach, on the other hand, is supportive. It helps employees become better, more responsible persons and then tries to create a climate in which they may contribute to the limits of their improved abilities. Essentially, the human resources approach means that better people achieve better results.

Give a person a fish, and you feed that person for a day, Teach a person to fish, and you feed that person for life.

2. Contingency approach

Traditional management relied on the principle of ―one best way of managing. There was a correct way to organize, delegate, and divide work. The correct way is applied regardless of the type of organisation or situation involved. The contingency approach to organizational behaviour means that different situations require different behavioural practices for effectiveness.

No longer is there a one best way. Each situation must be analysed carefully to determine the significant variables that exist in order to establish the kinds of practices that will be more effective. The strength of the contingency approach is that it encourages analysis of each situation prior to action, while at the same time discouraging habitual practice based on Universal assumptions about people.

The contingency approach also is more interdisciplinary, more system oriented, and more research-oriented than the traditional approach. Thus it helps to use in the most appropriate manner all the current knowledge about people in organisations.

3. Productivity approach

Productivity is a ratio that compares units of output with units of input. If more outputs can be produced from the same amount of inputs, productivity is improved or if fewer inputs can be used to produce the same amount of outputs, productivity has increased.

The idea of productivity does not imply that one should produce more output; rather it is a measure of how efficiently one produces whatever output is desired. Consequently, better productivity is a valuable measure of how well resources are used in society. It means that less is consumed to produce each unit of output. There is less waste and better conservation of resources.

Productivity often is measured in terms of economic inputs and outputs, but human and social inputs and outputs are also important, For example. if better organizational behaviour can improve job satisfaction, a human output or benefit occurs. In the same manner, when employee development programmes lead to a by-product of better citizens in a community, a valuable social output occurs.

Equations showing the role of organizational behaviour is work systems

Knowledge X skill                           =          Ability

Attitude X situation                         =         Motivation

Ability X Motivation                      =         Potential human performance

Human performance X Resources  =          Organizational productivity

4. Systems Approach

A system implies that there are many variables in organisations and that each of them affects all the others in a complex relationship. All people in organisations should be concerned with improving organizational behaviour.  Managers represent the administrative system and their role is to use organizational behaviour to improve people – organisation relationships as shown in the following figure.

Managers try to build a climate in which people are motivated work together, productively, and become more effective persons.

When organizational behaviour is applied with a systems approach it creates a triple reward system in which human, organizational and social objectives are met. People find more satisfaction in work when there is cooperation and teamwork. They are learning to grow and contribute. The organization also is more successful, because it operates more effectively.

Quality is better and costs are less. Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the triple reward system is society itself; because it has better products and services, better citizens and a climate of co-operation and progress.

5. Interdisciplinary Approach

This approach advocates that efficiency can be attained by finding the right methods to get the job done through specialization on the job by planning and scheduling, by using standard operating mechanisms, establishing standard time to do the job, by proper selection and training of personnel and through wage incentives.