Happy Friyay! This week I restarted playing tennis and being bad is not very fun, but now I’m working on it and it certainly beats the rowing machine or treadmill as I try and shed some of this lockdown weight. One topic that came up with my friends during our session was job satisfaction, and their apparent dissatisfaction at this time. At this point there feels like an overwhelming amount of people who lack job satisfaction currently, as part of today’s blog I’ll be looking further into this.
One trend I see a lot and have experienced myself is the high of successfully securing a new job, and gradually that high starts to sap away for reasons such as the job not meeting our expectations, the work becoming monotonous or the novelty of the job waring off. Fewer than two-thirds of employees (64%) in the UK are satisfied with their jobs, according to the preliminary findings of a new survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting covering over 1,100 workers. A reduction of 10% since the survey was last conducted, three years prior. Whilst there are several surveys of this nature and some producing varied results, it does appear that the consistent trend is that job dissatisfaction continues to grow.
So what is job satisfaction? Paul E Spector in his book “Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Causes, and Consequences” defined it as simply how people feel about their jobs and different aspects of their jobs. I feel like now would be a good time to say I’m satisfied by my current role although being new I still feel limited in how much I can contribute as I still learn some of the little yet fundamental things like acronyms used. Any combination of psychological, physiological, and environmental circumstances that cause a person to truthfully say that they are satisfied with a job is another definition of job satisfaction by Hoppock. By either of these definitions it’s worth thinking to yourself whether you are satisfied with your job too.
So why is employee satisfaction worth consideration, well for a lot us we’re working 5 days a week and since working from home has started there’s even less separation from work and home, 2 in 3 people feel like work stress follows them home. The quote –
“CHOOSE A JOB YOU LOVE, AND YOU WILL NEVER WORK A DAY IN YOUR LIFE.”
Is directly applicable to this topic, whilst it may be ambitious for us to all be in the perfect job, I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility to be in a job that offers satisfaction. What contributes to job satisfaction?
- ½ of the UK workforce view salary as their biggest job motivator
- Second to salary, flexible working, having a nice boss and a short commute cited as top 3 motivators
- Majority of people are more concerned with having a boss they like than a boss who’s more knowledgeable than them.
For organisations whilst they may not be able to overnight offer an increased salary to staff, depending on the role following the year we’ve just had they can offer hybrid working which has been a breath of fresh air, in addition to that organisations can invest into their staff, offering training and support for members perceived as difficult. Employees are ambassadors to organisations and if their staff are dissatisfied that creates a risk that talented individuals elect to take themselves to jobs or put off staff considering applying to join. Employees with increased job satisfaction benefit there companies more, offering better performance, higher productivity, loyalty and once again as ambassadors they can bring in talented staff to the company too. Likewise when there is dissatisfaction performances drop, and this may come at the expense of the customers and potential end users.
Personally, I remain intrigued by project management and for the most part the skills and experience I gain in my career are transferable to life skills and how I can better handle my affairs. I also like that projects have end points therefore there are opportunities to work on different types of projects and not always in the same position. This variety can be offered at the same organisation through working on different projects or programmes. Curious to know how people feel about their own jobs at this time or have they noticed this same sentiment amongst their own friends or colleagues.
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