Is job satisfaction the ultimate measure of employee well-being?

China Staff, Apr 2006 by Koppula, Ritu

Measurement of employee job satisfaction at work is a construct that has been researched extensively by business analysts and organisational psychologists. However, new research workplace related literature is moving away from upholding job satisfaction as the ultimate barometer to measuring employee well-being. Ritu Koppula attempts to go beyond the discussion of job satisfaction, and explores other equally important considerations that engage employees to their jobs.

Based on the idea that "happy workers are productive workers", job performance is a widely studied area of job satisfaction. Measuring job satisfaction in the workplace is a popular workplace construct, and in most cases, industrial/organisational psychologists or workplace consultants will almost always include job satisfaction as a measure of employee opinion in workplace surveys. For example, a potential survey item measuring employee job satisfaction (typically on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree) may read as: "Please indicate your level of satisfaction working for (insert organisation name)". However, is happiness or satisfaction with the job enough of an indicator to measure the emotional health of organisations?

Several studies discuss the importance of having employees feel psychologically committed or psychologically engaged with the work they do. Others note that organisations need to create an environment that fosters employees to feel like more than "units of production" to feeling more like corporate citizens, taking personal ownership in the optimal performance of the organisation. For example, Organ &c Ryan (1985) believe that employees, who are altruistic, are likely to comply with company policies and procedures because they are highly engaged, are able to see the big picture and have the desire to take on more responsibility on the job. These employees also aim to positively influence the organisation or their supervisors' behaviour toward them by initiating and eliciting positive interpersonal relations at work.

In order to better understand how to motivate employees to feel engaged in the work they do, it is necessary to first discuss the literature on job satisfaction, why it is important, whether satisfying all employees holds the key to stellar performance and the polar opposite of job satisfaction - job dissatisfaction. In doing this, the groundwork will be established, which will allow for a more robust understanding of the discussion around why moving beyond job satisfaction is becoming increasingly relevant; and why concepts like psychological contracting with the workplace are increasingly being talked about in relation to employees.

Job satisfaction in the workplace

Hackman and Oldham (1976) are pioneers in the study of job satisfaction as a psychological work construct in measuring employee fulfilment on the job. They describe job satisfaction in the form of the "Job Characteristics" model, which has five main facets directly impacting job satisfaction:

1. task identity - how closely the employee can relate to their part of the task being completed;

2. task significance - the importance of the employee's job on the task being completed;

3. skill variety - whether the employee has a variety of responsibilities or not;

4. autonomy - the amount of control that the employee has over their job; and

5. feedback - how confident the employee is that their job is being done well.

Judge et. al. (2001) also emphasises the importance of feedback, which they explain comes from all points of contact for an employee, such as comments from peers, supervisors, coworkers, and customers. In addition, they opine that getting feedback, hopefully positive, is just as important from one source as it is from the others.

Job satisfaction may include several facets, such as satisfaction with pay, supervisor, workplace resources, availability of equipment, appraisal process, work environment, etc. If a manager is aware that his or her staff is not satisfied, he or she should resolve to investigate this by closely analysing the reasons for the dissatisfaction. Once this is done, further action can be taken to resolve the source of dissatisfaction.

Why is job satisfaction important?

From a workplace perspective, psychologists also believe that consequences of job satisfaction affect life satisfaction, job performance, organisational citizenship behaviour, role withdrawal, and counterproductive behaviour. For example, previous research has shown that there is a relationship between job satisfaction and the employee's intention to quit. This means that if employees feel dissatisfied with their jobs, they may be more likely to quit working at that organisation, rather than if they felt satisfied.

Hence, it would be important for HR managers to take note of this and reduce or completely mitigate absenteeism (Cote & Morgan, 2002) by creating greater job satisfaction for direct reports. Employees also believe that their supervisors are one of the biggest reasons for job dissatisfaction as they may impose unnecessary constraints with the job, are unsupportive, show employee bias/favouritism or may overly micro-manage tasks instead of delegating assignments.