Job Satisfaction

Job Satisfaction

Job – Satisfaction refers to one’s feeling towards one’s job. It can only be inferred but not seen.

Job-Satisfaction is often determined by how well outcome meet or exceed expectation. Satisfaction in one’s job means increased commitment in the fulfillment of formal requirement.

E.A. Locks defined job-satisfaction as  : “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experience”.

1. C. Feldman defines it, “As the amount of overall positive affect (or feelings) that individuals have towards their jobs”.

Andrew J. Du Brine defined it as,  “Job satisfaction is a set of favorable or unfavourable feeling with which employees view their work”.

Job-satisfaction and job Attitude

• Both terms are typically used interchangeable.
• Both refer to effective orientation on the part of individual toward their work roles which they are present occupying.
• Job Attitude, refer predisposition to respond. Job-satisfaction on the other hand relates to performance factors.
• Attitude endures generally, but job- satisfaction is dynamic, it can decline ever more quickly than it developed.

Source of job satisfaction

1. Wages

Wages play  a significant role in influencing job -satisfaction. This  is because  of two  reasons; first, money is an important instrument in fulfilling one’s needs, and two, employees often see pay as a reflection of management’s concern for them.

2. Nature of Work

Most employees tend to prefer being given opportunities to use their skill and abilities and being offered a variety of tasks, freedom and feedback on how well they are doing. These features make jobs  challenging. Under condition of moderate challenge, employee experience pleasure and satisfaction.

3. Promotion

Promotional  opportunities affects job satisfaction considerably. The desire  for promotion is generally strong among employees as it involves  changer in job content, pay, responsibility, independence status  and the like.

4. Supervision

There  is  a positive relationship between  the quality of supervision and job  satisfaction. Supervision  who established a supportive personal  relationship with subordinates  contribute to their employee  satisfaction.

5. Work Group

The work group does serve  as a source of satisfaction to individual employees. It provides group member with opportunities  for interaction with each other.

6. Working Condition

Working condition that are compatible with an employee’s physically comfort and that facilitate dong a good job contribute to job satisfaction. Temperature, humidity, ventilating, lighting and noises, house of work, cleanliness of work place, adequate tool and equipment are the features which affect job satisfaction.

Measuring Job Satisfaction

There are number of ways of measuring job satisfaction. They  are as follows –

1. Rating Scales – This is the most common approach for measuring job satisfaction.
2. Interviews – Personal interview is another method of measuring satisfaction. Employees are interviewed individually and the responses reveal their satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
3. Critical Incidents – The critical incident approach was developed by Herzberg. Employees were asked to describe incidents in their job when they were particularly satisfied or dissatisfied.
4. Action Tendencies – These represent the inclination a people have to avoid or involve in certain things. By gathering information about how they feel like acting with respect to their jobs, job satisfaction can be measured.

Benefit of job satisfaction

1 . Job satisfaction survey  give management an ideation of general levels of satisfaction in a company.

2 . An unexpected benefit from job – satisfaction is improved attitude.

3. 3. Improved communication is another benefit of job satisfaction.
4. Help management assess training needs.
5. The job satisfaction survey can help discover the causes of indirect productivity problems, such as absenteeism, turnover and poor quality of work.

6 . One of the best uses of job-satisfaction survey is in the evaluation of the impact of Organisational changes on employee attitude.