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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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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Consequences of Workplace Stress
- Stress can impact an individual mentally and physically and so can decrease employee efficiency and job satisfaction.
- Stress in the workplace can be, so to speak, "contagious"—low job satisfaction is often something employees will discuss with one another.
- Managers should consistently discuss job satisfaction and professional and personal health with each of their subordinates one on one.
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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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Monetary Employee Compensation
- Monetary compensation can be either guaranteed (base) pay or variable pay and positively correlates with job satisfaction.
- Individual skills and experience levels of employees leave room for differentiation of income levels within the job-based pay structure.
- Salaries and wages are tied to a job description that lays out the expectations and responsibilities of an employee.
- Management can refer to job descriptions to determine whether employees qualify for raises.
- The effect of compensation on employee job satisfaction has also been studied.
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How Emotion and Mood Influence Behavior
- The decision-making effects of any kind of bad mood can hinder a person's job performance and lead to poor decisions that affect the company.
- Positive emotions can be a great thing, producing extroversion, energy and job satisfaction.
- Improving the level of job satisfaction for employees is another way that a company can influence an employee's mood.
- Job satisfaction can affect a person's mood and emotional state.
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Evidence-Based Management
- An example of EBMgt in practice could be a group of managers in an organization trying to determine how to improve job satisfaction.
- They could conduct a comprehensive and objective (therefore blind) survey across a large number of organizations, collecting enough data on the organizational reimbursements for employees, employee satisfaction, and company cultures to determine if a positive company culture is more relevant than salary to job satisfaction.
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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.
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Equity Theory
- Equity theory explains the relational satisfaction in terms of fair or unfair distribution of resources within interpersonal relationships.
- Equity theory attempts to explain relational satisfaction in terms of perceptions of fair or unfair distributions of resources within interpersonal relationships.
- Adams, a workplace and behavioral psychologist, asserted that employees seek to maintain equity between what they put into a job and what they receive from it against the perceived inputs and outcomes of others.
- This hostility may lead to the employee under-performing and could cause job dissatisfaction in others.
- Receiving recognition for strong job performance and being thanked can create employee satisfaction, and therefore help the employee feel worthwhile, resulting in better outcomes for both the individual and the organization.