People experiencing fulfillment for their job is important for each individual and the company they work for. Job satisfaction is a major reason why people choose their job, how motivated they are to produce good work, and why they choose to stay with their company. Job satisfaction is simply how someone feels about their job, their attitude towards the job and predisposition of whether they respond to their work environment in a positive or negative manner (Gruman et al., 2017). We have all experienced a bad work environment and promptly quit a job to find something different and better elsewhere. Hopefully, many of us have experienced good work environments that are engaging and give you a since of purpose and happiness. It is so important for companies to create a healthy setting for their employees to have positive job satisfaction. By making this investment they will have a more productive staff, keep more talent, and recruit more new talent.
In my personal experience I have certainly had non-satisfying jobs. There was a recent one that was a combination of things that made the job bad and negatively affected my attitude. I had a nice supervisor that was not rude or disrespectful, but everything they tasked me with always seemed remedial. There were specific guidelines on how to complete the duties I was assigned. I was not allowed to alter things and every suggestion that I offered to make something better was shot down. A lot of the tasks were monotonous; they did not take a lot of brainpower, which kept me less interested. Overall it was not a toxic work environment, but it was not engaging or empowering. Those combined factors made me feel undervalued and it did not take me long to find a new job and move on.
Some job characteristics that can help to create a positive satisfying work environment are, in general, giving staff members the opportunity to perform diverse tasks and independently control how they complete those tasks. The ability to complete a project from beginning to end and receive feedback on how effective their work is. Also, it is important for personnel to feel valuable because their work is significant and impactful. Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) influential job characteristics model refers to these five core characteristics, skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and job feedback (Gruman et al., 2017). These characteristics affect people’s job experience and can help determine how satisfied someone is with their job.
Communication is fundamental and it includes social behavior between people interacting to give and receive information (Gruman et al., 2017). This was key when I had a different job that was very satisfying and turned out to be a win-win positive work environment. I am grateful that I had a job where I was challenged and my boss encouraged me to take ownership of my position and make it my own. This dynamic enabled me to have the freedom to explore new ways of completing my duties, which made me care more about my work and our company. It also helped that myself and my boss got along on a more personal level and our personalities meshed well together. We were able to have open and honest communication and constructive feedback, about how we both could improve and work together as a team. It is crucial to factor in communication, job characteristics, social, and organizational elements when building a positive work environment; this can give your personnel the opportunity to have high job satisfaction, be happy, engaged, and overall thrive at work!
Reference
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
I agree that creating a positive work environment is crucial so that employees can fully demonstrate their skills.
I also had a time when I was struggling to do my job well. A company once asked me to help them improve their product. When I joined the project, I found that the lack of communication between the different sectors of the company was a significant problem, leading to delays in the schedule and product development. When I communicated an improvement plan to my manager regarding this, it was rejected, and in the end, no progress was made in product improvement, making for a rather stressful work environment. This experience taught me that one of the most important qualities of a team leader is to remain flexible in order to achieve goals. As we learned in textbooks, a leader’s style affects team members’ motivation and job satisfaction (Gruman, et al., 2016). In my example, the manager had a directive leadership style, so there was nothing the other team members and I could do other than follow his instructions. Especially in the field of product development, which requires creative skills, I think it is necessary to focus on creating an environment that fully brings out the abilities of the team members.
Since work occupies so much time in our lives, it is very important to have a satisfying job. I think that job satisfaction comes from feeling that your work is needed, feeling that you are contributing to the company’s growth, receiving regular feedback, being able to communicate well with colleagues, and feeling that you are making a positive impact on society. It should become clear what kind of leaders are needed to achieve this, what kind of training is needed, and how the company should create a better work environment.
Resources
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.