Work Attitudes and Work Behaviour - Coursework Example

Work attitudes and work behaviour Name: Professor: Institution: Course: Date: Work attitudes and work behaviour In the past, Human Resource professionals have argued that “happy employees are always productive” while other Human Professionals have that “Happy employees are not always productive employees”. These are just but some of the conflicting debates that Managers as well as Human Professionals have had in relation to job satisfaction and employee attitudes. This has been the debate even at this time when organization employees are increasing being seen to be a source of competitiveness and company success. The purpose of this essay will be to explore job attitudes and the outcome of job satisfaction. The essay will focus three job attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement and job engagement as exhibited in the Billy’s Building Supplies Inc. case study. The outcomes of job satisfaction relate to workplace behaviour or performance indicators and they will include the following: job satisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover and workplace deviance. This essay will argue on what Billy could have done to improve these job attitudes and the associated work behaviour. According to Stephen P, (2007), the term attitude refers to the point of view of a person or the way they look at something. It is a person’s mental state that prepares them to act or behave in particular way. It is an integration of feelings and beliefs that people have about particular people, situations or towards other people. We do have attitude towards people we meet, courses we take, the food we eat and the things we do. At the place of work, some of the major attitudes include, job satisfaction, job engagement, job involvement, Perceived Organizational Support (POS), organization commitment and psychological empowerment. Job attitudes and job satisfaction are like the two sides of a coin where both of them have to be valued equally so as to create a successful organization. Job attitudes are proportional to the job satisfaction whereby if the employees of a company are over performing or underperforming, it is as a result of deviations in gaining job satisfaction. As a manager with a strong desire to run a successful company, it is important that attention is paid to changes in employees attitudes. If a company values its employees, then it is possible to have a loyal team of work force and be able to gain profits (Stephen P, 2007). This essay will focus on the three major attitudes and how they are related to work place behaviour. Job satisfaction refers to an attitude that reflects the extent to which a person is fulfilled with their work. Past researches have shown that job satisfaction is brought about by factors such as aspiration and individual needs, relationship with the co-workers which greatly affect attitude and their supervisors, working conditions, compensation as well as working policy. In the case of Ted, he felt that the job was becoming monotonous due to repetition of tasks and he felt the need to have a change of the working conditions. He felt the need for being promoted to the level of being a partner which means that he feels that he has no self actualization. In the theory of Maslow about the hierarchy of needs, Maslow assumes that people are usually motivated to satisfy 5 levels of needs which are physiological, security, belongingness, esteem and self-actualization needs (Stephen P, 2007). This is as shown in the diagram below According to Maslow, the five needs are arranged according to how important they are from bottom to top. To begin with an employee like Ted will be interested to first of all satisfy the psychological needs. Some of the needs are food, clothing, shelter comfort and self preservation (Stephen P, 2007). Once these needs are satisfied, Ted was then motivated to move higher to satisfy the security needs. This needs include job security, fringe benefits, and safe working conditions as well as proper supervision. Ted was able to satisfy these needs. This was made possible by Ted his employer who saw to it that Ted received all of these needs. Once they were satisfied, Ted moved up the hierarchy to satisfy the social needs. Some of the social needs include the opportunity to interact with co-workers, friendly co-workers and team based work. Right from the first day that Ted joined the company, the other workers were ready to work with him and even teach him how the job is done. They did train him well until he was able to do the job with a lot of ease. When this need was satisfied, then Ted was ready to satisfy the esteem needs. This needs comprise of the need for respect and recognition from others as well as the need for self respect and having a positive image (Stephen P, 2007). In Teds Case, he had been able to satisfy the need for self respect and the need for a positive image but he still felt that he need recognition and respect from others. It is for this reason that he felt that Bill needed to recognize him and promote him the level of a partner. He also needed a challenging job so as to gain a sense of accomplishment. He says that the other job was becoming monotonous and he needed to do something different, something more challenging. At the top of Maslows hierarchy of needs is the need for self actualization. This is the need to realize and maximize one’s potential for continued personal development and growth and since these needs are highly personalized, managers like Bill find it difficult to deal with. This needs include creative work, involvement in decision making and planning work and having opportunities for growth and development. This is something that Ted has not been able to achieve with Bill’s supplies. He feels that he needs to be promoted from a worker to a partner so as to get opportunities to grow and develop (Stephen P, 2007). Job involvement means identifying with a job and actively participating in it while considering performance as crucial to the self worth. It is an attachment to ones job that generally exceeds normal levels of job commitment. Past researches have proved that causes of voluntary absenteeism and labour turnover as well as work deviance. In the case of Ted, initially he had an attachment to the job as he accomplished the Maslow hierarchy of needs but when the job became monotonous, he felt it was boring he needed a job that would be more challenging. His levels of job involvement started to deteriorate and he started missing the job and arriving rate, work deviance and finally, he quit his job (Eugene F, 2011). Job engagement is a management concept where an engaged employee is a worker who is involved fully and is very enthusiastic about their job and therefore acts in a way that is of benefit to both the worker and the organization at large. It is a measurable level of negative or positive attachment to their work, organization and the job which greatly influences how they perform at the work place (Aamodt, M, 2009). If an employee has high levels of job engagement, then they have job satisfaction. In the case of Ted, when he was first employed, he was enthusiastic about the job and was very committed towards making Bill’s supply a success. Ted settled in quickly and for the first few months everything seemed to go very well. Billy received very positive feedback from his customers about Ted and his sales increased. However, as he continued to work, he found the work to be monotonous and wanted to have a change of the environment by becoming partners with Bill. Since he was not able to get this, Ted gradually stopped being enthusiastic about the job and he was no longer fully involved in the job Some of the outcomes of job satisfaction include work deviance, absenteeism and labour turnover. Work deviance is the intentional or the deliberate desire or urges to cause harm to an organization or in a work place. This concept is increasingly becoming important in organization communication. More specifically, it is an organization behaviour that is voluntary and is aimed at violating the organization norms which in the long run poses a threat to the organization’s well being. Ted can be said to have organization deviance. This incorporates both property and production deviance. In property deviance, the workers deviance behaviour is harmful to an organization’s property. Here workers will either acquire or damage the assets of an organizations without authorization (Gregory M & Griffin R.S 2008). In Ted’s case, he accessed the company’s essential documents from Bill’s computer without authorization. This way he was able to get the information of the suppliers of bill’s supplies and started his own company hence causing harm to Bill’s Supplies through deviating the customers to make them sales outside Bill’s Supplies. Under production deviance, an employee’s deviating behaviour usually has a negative impact on the overall production of the company. Ted was able to do this through violating the company’s norms with respect to the quantity and quality of work he was expected to accomplish. He started arriving late for the job and taking sick leaves on short notice and extended lunch hours and the other sales assistants had to cover his work during those times. When he was at work, he acted as if he was the other sales assistants’ supervisor, interfering with how they served their customers and taking over customers from the sales assistants. Many of the regular customers did not return after being served by Ted and slowly but significantly sales started to drop (Gregory M & Griffin R.S 2008). Absenteeism in the organization is one of the most difficult habits that employers have to deal with. This is because absenteeism is rarely monitored properly and managers ignore on the bases that the worker will not be paid for that day they missed work. Problems of reduced sales, co-workers getting upset since they have to cover up for the work load of the absent worker are not even taken into consideration by the supervisors. This was what happened in Bill’s Supplies when Bill failed to take action on Ted’s absenteeism. He started arriving late for the job and taking sick leaves on short notice and extended lunch hours and the other sales assistants had to cover his work during those times. Proper attendance is a very crucial duty for all employees and should they miss work for no good reason, then the worker is in breach of a contract and should be dismissed (Gregory M & Griffin R.S 2008). Employee turnover is a situation where employees move in and out of a business. High turnover has brought about a lot of problems for organizations include lowering the morale of the workers, productivity and increased costs. It may also be harmful to the company if they continuously lose the skilled labour force and the larger population will consist of novice workers. Workers leave the organization for many reasons. Some of the reasons include: low levels or motivation, inadequate wages which make workers to move to their competitor, more opportunities in the market and selection and recruitment of the wrong worker and so they end up leaving (Martin et al 2011). In conclusion it is important to note that lack of job satisfaction among the organization employees has very adverse results as analyzed in the essay above if not taken care of in time. If Bill had taken note of the salesmen complaints and worked on them in time, then maybe he would have been able to counter the losses that came with lack of job satisfaction by Ted. It is therefore important that managers see to it that all employees have job satisfaction since that way, they are going to be motivated to do better and this will lead to increased sales and profit which means the needs of the employee as well as those of the organization will have been met. References Aamodt, M. (2009). Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Belmont, CA. Cengage Learning. Eugene F. Stone‐Romero (2011) job involvement Retrieved on 16th September 2011 http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631233176_chunk_g978140511697813_ss1-12 Gregory Moorehead & R.S. Griffin (2008) Organisational Behaviours: Managing People and Organisations, Jaico, Lise M. Saari & Timothy A. Judge (2004) Employee attitudes and job Satisfaction Retrieved on 16th September 2011 from http://www.utm.edu/staff/mikem/documents/jobsatisfaction.pdf Martin, Thomas N, Hafer, & John C (2010) Turnover is linked to job involvement and organizational commitment Retrieved on 16th September 2011 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3629/is_199506/ai_n8719596/ Mukta Gaikwad (2011) Employee Attitudes and Job Satisfaction Retrieved on 16th September 2011 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/employee-attitudes-and-job-satisfaction.html Rujuta Borkar (2011) Job Satisfaction Factors Retrieved on 16th September 2011 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/employee-attitudes-and-job-satisfaction.html Stephen P. Bobbins, (2007)Organisational Behaviour, Prentice Hall. Read More