Introduction
In the modern business world, job satisfaction is considered to be one of the most powerful forces that determine the success of any organization regardless of the sector to which it belongs. This indicator is predetermined by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including employees’ attitude towards their organization and its leaders, relationships with colleagues, promotion prospects, workplace atmosphere, the company’s image, resources, training opportunities, security level, etc. (Shahzad, Khan, & Khan, 2015). The main objective of managers that want to ensure the effective operation of their company is to investigate the key incentives for workers (both financial and non-financial ones) and the constituents of employees’ motivation and their ability to boost organizational performance.
Definition of Employee Satisfaction
This concept of employee satisfaction can be defined as a positive state of mind that is caused by employees’ realization of their commitment to the company making a valuable contribution to its success that goes in hand with the achievement of personal goals (Guillon & Cezanne, 2014). No matter how different organizations may seem, they still share a set of common conditions that predetermine job satisfaction. Among the most common are the following ones: commitment to the organization and motivation, successful performance, relations with co-workers and supervisor, salary, working environment, promotion, and status (Kazan & Gumus, 2013). However, some studies also name ability utilization, collaboration, independence, and creativity (Mafini & Pooe, 2013).
Importance of Employee Satisfaction
The importance of job satisfaction is hard to overestimate. Not only that it creates favorable working conditions based on mutual respect and cooperation, but it also ensures the commitment of employees to the company. There exists a controversial opinion that job satisfaction does not have any influence on organizational performance whatsoever, which means that there is no reason for companies to pursue this goal. However, the analysis of numerous case studies proves that this supposition is far from being true (Yousaf, Latif, Aslam, & Saddiqui, 2014).
Results of Employee Satisfaction
There are a lot of studies on the topic that give different results of job satisfaction. Most researchers acknowledge that this factor accounts for more than 30 percent of working performance and approximately 50 percent of occupational commitment. Yet, it is also important to take into account the level of dissatisfaction. Any organization acts and a synergetic system, which preserves its stability up to a certain point when it can no longer deal with fluctuations disturbing it. That is why employee dissatisfaction does not interfere with the overall performance until it exceeds 20 percent. When it reaches 40 percent, it starts affecting the performance accordingly. At 50 percent, the performance is impaired by more than 70 percent (Braun, Peus, Weisweiler, & Frey, 2013).
Ways and Methods to help Satisfying Employees
There are a lot of ways to keep employees satisfied. They can be summed up as follows (Yousaf et al., 2014):
- provide favorable working conditions;
- ensure positive state of mind;
- set goals that employees would be eager to pursue;
- maintain the level of motivation;
- provide financial and non-financial incentives as well as competitive benefits on a regular basis;
- ensure justice in rewards and penalties;
- promote teamwork and cooperation;
- demonstrate strong leadership;
- strive for excellence in organizational performance;
- provide opportunities for education and development.
Conclusion
There are a lot of constituents of job satisfaction, the importance of which varies depending on the organization. Although some theories of job satisfaction may help explain why this or that failure in employee satisfaction happens, they generally do not give answers on how to handle each particular case since there is no universal solution for all organizations. Each company is a small closed world living in accordance with its inner laws, which implies that dissatisfaction may emerge even if all generally required conditions seem to be provided. Thus, in order to ensure job satisfaction, each company must be analyzed separately.
References
Braun, S., Peus, C., Weisweiler, S., & Frey, D. (2013). Transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 270-283.
Guillon, O., & Cezanne, C. (2014). Employee loyalty and organizational performance: A critical survey. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 27(5), 839-850.
Kazan, H., & Gumus, S. (2013). Measurement of employees’ performance: A state bank application. International Review of Management and Business Research, 2(2), 429-441.
Mafini, C., & Pooe, D. R. (2013). The relationship between employee satisfaction and organisational performance: Evidence from a South African government department. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 39(1), 1-9.
Shahzad, S., Khan S., & Khan Z. (2015). Contributing factors of employee’s performance: A case study of local NGOs in Peshawar City. UTMS Journal of Economics, 6 (1), 127–134.
Yousaf, S., Latif, M., Aslam, S., & Saddiqui, A. (2014). Impact of financial and non-financial rewards on employee motivation. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 21(10), 1776-1786.