Job satisfaction

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 489.

Unit 5

“Happiness is having one's passion for one's profession”, wrote Stendhal. Unfortunately, the number of people in this position is limited, but there are all sorts of office and factory work that can make it enjoyable. Relations with colleagues may be satisfying. People may find great pleasure in working in a team, for example. Conversely, bad relations with colleagues may be extremely unpleasant, and lead to great dissatisfaction and distress. Job satisfaction is really necessary and may influence efficiency. For employees the feeling of belonging is important because it is vital for self-estimation, especially it is so in Asian cultures. Status and creativity are also connected with job satisfaction.

Basic work on what motivates people in organizations was done by Frederick Herzberg. He found that things such as salary and working conditions were not enough to make employees satisfied with their work, but that they can cause dissatisfaction if they are not good enough. He called these things hygiene factors. These are: supervision, company policy, working conditions, salary, peer relationships, security.

Some things can give positive satisfaction. These are motivating factors: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, growth.

Another classic writer in this area is Douglas McGregor, who talked about Theory X, the idea, still held by many managers, that people instinctively dislike work, and Theory Y, the view that everybody has the potential for development and for taking responsibility.

It is often vital for employees when management delegates them some duties, that's why nowadays a lot of attention is paid to empowerment, the idea that decision-making should be decentralised to workers who are as close as possible to the issues to be resolved.

However, where some employees may find pleasure, for others it is a source of stress. People talk more about the need for work that gives them quality of life, the work-life balance and the avoidance of stress. Others argue that challenge involves a reasonable and inevitable degree of stress if people are to have achievement, a necessary outcome of work if it is to give satisfaction. They complain that a stress industry is emerging, with its stress counselors and stress therapists, when levels of stress are in reality no higher today than they were before.

Nevertheless, modern problems of motivation are closely connected with working under stress and long hours. There is even a new term “karoshi” came from Japan that means “death from overwork”. That's why managers try to motivate people in order not to lose them. There are lots of methods of motivation such as perks & bonuses, competition, personal relations, nepotism, favouritism, moral incentives, flexible hours, free lance, part-time job, e-commuting, down shifting, etc.