job satisfaction
(noun)
The level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her work.
Examples of job satisfaction in the following topics:
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Defining Job Satisfaction
- Job satisfaction is the level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her job.
- Job satisfaction falls into two levels: affective job satisfaction and cognitive job satisfaction.
- Affective job satisfaction is a person's emotional feeling about the job as a whole.
- These assessments help management define job satisfaction objectively.
- Typically, five factors can be used to measure and influence job satisfaction:
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How Job Satisfaction Influences Behavior
- Job satisfaction can affect a person's level of commitment to the organization, absenteeism, and job turnover.
- Job satisfaction can affect a person's level of commitment to the organization, absenteeism, and job turnover rate.
- Job satisfaction also reduces stress, which can affect job performance, mental well-being, and physical health.
- One proven way to enhance job satisfaction is rewarding employees based on performance and positive behavior.
- Discuss the way in which job satisfaction reflects upon work behaviors in an organization
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The Psychology of Employee Satisfaction
- Job satisfaction reflects employees' overall assessment of their job through emotions, behaviors, and attitudes about their work experience.
- Satisfaction with one's job has theoretical and practical utility linked to important job outcomes, such as attitudinal variables, absenteeism, employee turnover, and job performance.
- Job satisfaction has a strong positive correlation with life satisfaction, and as such, improving job satisfaction should be considered a priority.
- Some of the methods below can improve employee job satisfaction.
- These programs can lead to employee job satisfaction and flexibility.
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Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory
- The Two-factor theory indicates that one set of factors at work cause job satisfaction, while another set of factors cause dissatisfaction.
- It was developed by Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist, who theorized that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction act independently of each other.
- If management is equally concerned with both satisfaction and dissatisfaction, then managers must give attention to both sets of job factors.
- Hygiene factors (e.g. status, job security, salary, fringe benefits, work conditions) that do not give positive satisfaction, though dissatisfaction results from their absence.
- Herzberg's theory implies that simple recognition is often enough to motivate employees and increase job satisfaction.
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Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory
- Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory states that certain factors cause job satisfaction and other factors cause dissatisfaction.
- Frederick Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory, also known as Motivation-Hygiene Theory or intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, concludes that there are certain factors in the workplace that can cause job satisfaction and a separate set of factors that can cause dissatisfaction.
- Extrinsic motivators include status, job security, salary, and fringe benefits.
- If management wants to increase employees' job satisfaction, they should be concerned with the nature of the work itself—the opportunities it presents employees for gaining status, assuming responsibility, and achieving self-realization.
- To ensure a satisfied and productive workforce, managers must pay attention to both sets of job factors.
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Fairness
- Perceptions of justice influence many key organizational outcomes such as motivation (Latham & Pinder, 2005) and job satisfaction (Al-Zu'bi, 2010).
- Commonly cited affected outcomes include trust, performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, counterproductive work behaviors, absenteeism, and turnover.
- One way that employees restore justice is by altering their level of job performance.
- Job satisfaction was found to be positively associated with overall perceptions of organizational justice such that greater perceived injustice results in lower levels of job satisfaction and vice versa.
- Disgruntled employees who feel unfairly treated may suffer from a drop in work performance, have lower job satisfaction, and may have higher absenteeism or withdrawal.
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Job Characteristics Theory
- The Job Characteristics Theory is a framework for identifying how job characteristics affect job outcomes.
- The Job Characteristics Theory (JCT), also referred to as Core Characteristics Model and developed by Hackman and Oldham, is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics impact job outcomes, including job satisfaction.
- No one combination of characteristics makes for the ideal job; rather, it is the purpose of job design to adjust the levels of each characteristic to attune the overall job with the worker performing it.
- The job characteristics directly derive the three states.
- The five core job characteristics can be combined to form a motivating potential score for a job that can be used as an index of how likely a job is to affect an employee's attitudes and behaviors.
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Job Design
- Careful job design has been shown to increase job satisfaction, improve through-put, and lessen employee problems like grievances and absenteeism.
- The aims of work design are to improve job satisfaction, to improve through-put, to improve quality, and to reduce employee problems.
- Job Rotation: Job rotation involves moving employees from job to job at regular intervals.
- These three psychological states in turn are related to positive outcomes such as overall job satisfaction, internal motivation, higher performance, and lower absenteeism and turnover.
- Explain the four tactics of job design and the five core job dimensions
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Brief history of traditional approaches to job design
- Frederick Taylor developed this theory in an effort to develop a "science" for every job within an organization (Taylorism).
- Hertzberg's Motivation-Hygiene theory attempts to uncover psychological needs of employees and enhance employee satisfaction.
- Simple recognition is often enough to motivate employees and increase job satisfaction (Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory).
- More effective jobs can be created when specific goals are established.
- If a company wants to implement goal setting theory with regards to job design than a reasonable job criteria and description must be established.
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Tactics for Improving Fit
- Ways of improving job fit include assessing employee activities through various tools to increase employee satisfaction and efficiency.
- The basis for improving fit between the employee and the job is striking a balance between job design and individual—crafting the job in such a way that it complements the employee's individual skills, aspirations, personality, and attributes.
- As a result, flexibility to tailor the job design for both organizational effectiveness and employee job satisfaction is a significant, ongoing part of the job design process.
- Job analysis employs a series of steps which enable a supervisor to assess a given employee/job fit and to improve the fit, if necessary.
- In this situation, the supervisor can also customize each discussion to become more familiar with the personality, levels of satisfaction, and perceived efficiency of each employee.