What Causes Job Satisfaction?

by: William King

In order to have a successful organization, being a higher authority you should always ensure the employees’ satisfaction level. There are several variables that can be used to measure the job satisfaction and you should be aware of all the components that influence the way a person feels about his job. Many such facets that contribute to job satisfaction are the work itself, pay, promotions, job achievements, coworkers, supervision and benefits.

Think about your jobs, which one is the best you ever had? What you had enjoyed the most? Mostly people agree on the fact that pay is the basic cause of satisfaction and happiness, however, it is not found to be true in most cases. Employees enjoy the working environment at most, because interesting jobs give them the opportunity to get variety of job tasks, training, happy work hours and control on their tasks, this is the thing that satisfy most of the workers. Capable people enjoy the challenging work as compared to the routine tasks.

Then comes pay, people usually discuss jobs on the salary basis. There is an interesting relationship between pay and satisfaction. People, who live in underdeveloped countries, usually correlate pay with satisfaction and in turn with happiness. It is also observed that once an individual attains a specific level of satisfaction this relation disappears. Jobs that are compensated handsomely have average job satisfaction levels no higher than those that are paid much less. Money motivates us, but it is not necessary that anything that motivates us must make us happy also.

In addition to pay, another thing that can be an affective factor that can cause satisfaction to the individual is his goals. Individuals identify their goals in the organization and move towards goals with the people who work there. Sometimes, a person feels that it will be against norms to quit or if he will quit he can not continue to have the same lifestyle. Thus it seems like 9-5 job is imposed on him and he looses his interest in it.

Happy Workers are Productive Workers. Organizational commitment is also a result of job satisfaction. The more the people are committed to their organization better is their productivity. Organizations are working to make their employees happier by focusing on working conditions and improving the environment. Personalities also play important role in job satisfaction. Positive attitude people are more satisfied and people who are less positive about themselves are less likely to like their jobs.

Job satisfaction is an important factor for evaluating the organization’s success. A productive organization is the one with satisfied workers and happy environment.

About The Author

This article is about job satisfaction’s importance and how can we measure it through different ways?