A Business Encyclopedia

Job Satisfaction

Definition: Job Satisfaction, as the name suggests, is the feeling of contentment or a sense of accomplishment, which an employee derives from his/her job. It is a result of appraisal that causes one to attain their job values or meet out their basic needs. It helps in determining, to what extent a person likes or dislikes his/her job.

The employee’s attitude towards the job and organization as well becomes positive when they realize that their job facilitates them in achieving their needs and values, directly (by performing it) or indirectly (by the package they get). In short, it represents the difference between employee’s expectations and experience he/she derives from the job. The wider the gap, the more is the dissatisfaction.

Facets of Job Satisfaction

Job Satisfaction is all about an individual’s feelings about the work, work environment, pay, organization culture, job security and so on. The essential aspects of job satisfaction include:

  1. Job content facet
    • Work characteristics
    • Amount of work
    • Compensation
  2. Job context facet
    • Co-workers, Colleagues, Supervisor, etc.
    • Working conditions
    • Growth and development opportunities
    • Policies and rules of organisation

There are instances when an employee’s feelings concerning one facet may spill over and affect another facet, meaning that if an employee is unhappy with the amount of work, he/she will likely to become unhappy with the compensation received. Moreover, each facet of job satisfaction is linked to the respective work environment and cognitive component of the employee’s attitude.

Causes of Job Satisfaction

  • Experience: The experience an employee receives from various components of the work environment, will influence his/her attitude towards them. Suppose a job is monotonous and not exciting, then the employee is likely to get dissatisfied with it. There are many organizations which invest a large sum in making it more interesting and challenging so that it actively engage the employees and their satisfaction level would be high.
  • Association: Association plays a dominant role in job satisfaction, in the sense that if the current job of the employee is similar to the one he has done in the past, then he may derive satisfaction level of his previous job to the present one.
  • Social Learning: In an organization, people work in groups and interact with them regularly, either formally or informally, which has a great impact on the level of their satisfaction. Employees whose job is similar communicate with one another and tend to develop the same feelings for job elements like the work itself, pay, working conditions, rules, supervisor, manager, etc.

    Suppose if someone says that This job is tedious and unchallenging, everyone in the group agrees to it and develop similar attitude.

  • Heredity: Genetic predispositions is important in the context of job satisfaction as people. According to research, about 30 percent of the job satisfaction is based on the heredity components.

Managers can measure job satisfaction of a worker by observing their behaviour, interviewing and distributing questionnaires, to get the information properly.

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