Actually employees satisfaction in their job has many dimensions it is very important first to analyse it to determine the way of its improvement. Yet generally, employee satisfaction is measured against major work characteristics:
1- Motivational characteristics: which is the interistic motivational factors linked to pay and fringe benefits.
2- knowledge characteristics: which are linked to training and development.
3- social characteristics: which is linked to employees social interactions inside the organisation like friendships and supervision support.
4- work context characteristics: linked to comfort of the employees in the workplace
Employee satisfaction at work has decreased significantly in the past twenty years, as these figures indicate – and I predict employee satisfaction will get worse in the next few years. A combination of events is creating a perfect storm affecting employee satisfaction.
A generation of employees who feel entitled to employee satisfaction has entered the workforce and several generations of employees for whom work never quite fulfilled their dreams, are leaving. And, they are leaving in the worst of economic times which will affect their satisfaction with the rest of the quality of life they experience.
This downward trend in job satisfaction raises concerns about the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity, retention, creativity, risk-taking, mentoring, and in overall employee motivation and interest in work.
“These numbers do not bode well given the multi-generational dynamics of the labor force,” says Linda Barrington, managing director, Human Capital, at The Conference Board. “The newest federal statistics show that baby boomers will compose a quarter of the U.S. workforce in eight years, and since 1987 we’ve watched them increasingly losing faith in the workplace.” Twenty years ago, 60% of Baby Boomers were satisfied with their jobs; today only 46% are. Barrington expresses concern about the growing lack of employee satisfaction because of its potential impact on knowledge transfer to and mentoring for the next generations of employees.
According to The Conference Board’s survey results announcement, “The drop in job satisfaction between 1987 and 2009 covers all categories in the survey, from interest in work (down 18.9 percentage points) to job security (down 17.5 percentage points) and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality, and extrinsic rewards.”
What Employers Can Do About Employee Satisfaction
In this environment for employee satisfaction, it is vitally important to know which factors most affect employee satisfaction. You want to spend your time, money, and energy on programs, processes, and factors that will have a positive impact on employee satisfaction. A 2009 survey, by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) looked at 24 factors that are regularly thought to relate to employee satisfaction. The study found that employees identified these five factors as most important:
job security,
benefits (especially health care) with the importance of retirement benefits rising with the age of the employee,
compensation/pay,
opportunities to use skills and abilities, and
feeling safe in the work environment.
The next five most important factors affecting employee satisfaction were:
the employee's relationship with his or her immediate supervisor,
management recognition of employee job performance,
communication between employees and senior management,
the work itself, and
autonomy and independence in their job.
Factors that were not strongly connected to employee satisfaction included:
“the organization’s commitment to a ‘green’ workplace,
networking opportunities,
career development opportunities,
paid training and tuition reimbursement programs, and
the organization’s commitment to professional development.”
In contrast, Human Resources professionals ranked these ten factors as most important in employee satisfaction:
job security,
relationship with immediate supervisor,
benefits,
communication between employees and senior management,
opportunities to use skills and abilities,
management recognition of employee job performance,
job-specific training,
feeling safe in the work environment,
compensation/pay, and
overall corporate culture.
