Influence of Job Satisfaction on Staff Turnover - Dissertation Example

?Running Head: Influence of Job Satisfaction on Staff Turnover Influence of Job Satisfaction on Staff Turnover [Institute’s Influence of Job Satisfaction on Staff Turnover Literature Review The feeling of the employees about various characteristic of their job is job satisfaction. The term job satisfaction illustrates how pleased a person is with her or his job. The individuals who are more contented with their jobs are more satisfied. Graham defined job satisfaction as, "The measurement of one's total feelings and attitudes towards one's job"(Graham, p. 68, 1982). Some specialists state job satisfaction as “any combination of psychological, physiological, and environmental circumstances that causes a person truthfully to say, ‘I am satisfied with my job’” (Hoppock, p. 47, 1935). One more defines job satisfaction as “an affective (emotional) reaction to a job that results from the incumbent’s comparison of actual outcomes with those that are desired” (Cranny et al., p.1, 1992). Dissatisfied employees are always complaining about their physical health like stiffness in muscles and joints (O’Driscoll & Beehr, 1994). Job satisfaction is a key factor that affects the employee’s turnover intention and, “Job satisfaction is important for organizations to address due to its impact on absenteeism, (1) turnover, (2) and pro-social “citizenship” behaviors such as helping coworkers, helping customers, and being more cooperative with all social ties” (Karl & Sutton, p.515, 1998). Dissatisfaction of the employees when reaches a certain limit, it gives rise to turnover intention. Most of the studies show a reasonable connection between job satisfaction and turnover intentions (Samad, pp. 1-5, 2006). Turnover intention is the intent of the staff to quit their organization. The ratio of the figure of members of organization who leave during a specific period divided by the average number of employees in that organization is the rate of turnover (Price, p.10-25, 1977). Dissatisfaction of employees is a major issue for the organizations as they suffer a lot if a competent individual quits the job due to dissatisfaction. Turnover can cause serious damage and destruction to the organization by bringing extra direct or indirect cost to it. Expenses incurred on the assortment, staffing, initiation and training of new workers is direct cost (Staw, p. 253-273, 1980). Cost of knowledge, abridged morale, stress on the existing staff and the loss of social capital are the indirect costs suffered by the organization (Des & Shaw, p.446-456, 2001). Therefore, the organizations must take steps to identify the factors causing job dissatisfaction in the employees. A number of aspects influence the job satisfaction of the employees. The matter of knowing about the factors affecting the job satisfaction of the individuals working for the organization is of utmost importance. The two types of the factors that manipulate the job satisfaction of an individual are factors involving the work environment and the demographic characteristics. Education, gender, age, and term of employment are the demographic measures while the difference of roles, task variety, remuneration, and relationship with colleagues are the work environment measures (Allen, pp. 27, 2002). It is obligatory for the organization to provide best possible working environment to the employees so that they feel comfortable. Dissatisfied employees are a cause of numerous problems for the organizations and are not productive. A recent study reveals the consequences of job dissatisfaction through which one can conclude that if disgruntled workers stay in the organization they may take on counter-productive activities (Spector, 1997). Roznowski and Hulin contend that overall job satisfaction measures are "the most informative data a manager or researcher can have for predicting employee behavior"(Roznowski and Hulin, 1992, p. 26). Job satisfaction of an individual directly affects his or her turnover intention. Experts have been discussing about the forecasting of turnover intention through the knowledge of job satisfaction of the employees (Brough and Frame, p.8-16, 2004). Job satisfaction is the major reason behind turnovers and one can predict the turnover intention of a person by knowing how satisfied he or she is from his or her current job. A paper journal gives information about the modest relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intentions (Khatri and Fern, p.54-74, 2001). Job dissatisfaction is more common in the less paid jobs. Organizational commitment is also one of the most vital precursors to turnover intention of an employee. Some experts give the meaning of organizational commitment as the degree to which persons feel faithful to their organization (Price, p.10-25, 1997). Meyer and Allen recommended that a “committed employee is one who will stay with the organization through thick and thin, attends work regularly, puts in a full day, protects company assets and who shares company goals” (Meyer and Allen, p.27, 1997). The most satisfied employee is more likely to feel a commitment to his or her organization. Organizational commitment increases with the passage of time and many research papers tells about the psychology of the employees that commitment develops slowly by the passage of time because of the employer/ employee relationship (Mowday et al., 1982). Some researchers have examined that individuals with more commitment would be less likely to think about leaving the organization (Iverson & Buttigieg, p.307 -333, 1999; Jaros, p.319-337, 1997,). Therefore, organizational commitment of the person depends on his or her job satisfaction and indirectly affects the turnover intention of that person. Therefore, it means that the higher the job satisfaction, the lower the possibility of turnover. The disposition of a person also matters a lot; a person with a positive disposition toward life is more likely to quit the organization due to dissatisfaction. Authors have very effectively discussed in an article about some individuals who generally complain more (Weitz, p. 201-205, 1952). The individuals with negative disposition are generally dissatisfied with their life style so, the dissatisfaction with the job is not much meaningful to them than the other disgruntling events in their life. Job is only a source of earning for them and nothing more and they hesitate to take any step that will make their life style better. Literature review identified another research paper that discussed about people who are negatively disposed toward their life style and are less likely to withdraw the job (Fisher and Locke, 1992). On the other hand, dissatisfaction with the job affect the person more, who is overall satisfied and content with his or her life. Therefore, there is a higher correspondence between turnover and job satisfaction for the individuals having positive disposition towards life than the persons with negative temperament. The turnover rate for the individuals with positive disposition who are dissatisfied with their job is also higher. High turnover rate cause a number of obscurities for the organizations like less productivity, poor quality, less profits, etc (Cranny et al, pp. 29-34, 1992). High turnover rate affect the small companies more than the major ones but major companies also suffer a great deal. Reduction in the turnover rate of the employees saves money and organizations can use that money for other matters that are more significant than hiring a new employee. The organizations pay more concentration towards the individuals who perform well than others do to motivate them so they are less likely to quit the job. “The negative relationship between performance and turnover appears to be the major conclusive finding, indicating that high performance employees would be less likely to leave than lower performance ones” (Hong & Chao, p.217, 2007). Losing a satisfying and well performing employee is a major damage to the organization than loosing a low performing one. Research indicates that approximately twenty-five percent of the turnovers are employees showing lower performance (Hong & Chao, pp. 217, 2007). The well-being of the employees is becoming very important for the organizations. Organizations give considerable importance to the needs, wants, and demands of the customers for benefit of their business. However, it is as much important to acknowledge the needs of the employees because they are the most significant asset of the organization. The level of satisfaction of the staff directly affects the turnover rate. Dissatisfaction of a staff member not only results in a turnover, but also customer dissatisfaction that directly influences the business. Organizations have to bear heavy financial burden due to voluntary turnover (Fishes & Locke, pp. 50-54, 1992). Losing a good employee results in heavy damage, organizations should avoid such problem by fulfilling the requirements of the staff by providing a prospering working environment in which an individual can use his or her abilities for the benefit of the organization. Organizations must use latest technology to differentiate between the low performing and high performing employees and should take steps to retain the well-performing ones. Method To preserve the productive employees and stop turnovers, it is very imperative for organizations to measure the job satisfaction of the staff. “From an employee’s standpoint, job satisfaction is a desirable outcome in itself. From a managerial or organizational effectiveness standpoint, job satisfaction is important due to its impact on absenteeism (1) turnover, (2) and pro-social “citizenship” behaviors such as helping coworkers, helping customers, and being more cooperative. Thus, to redesign jobs, reward systems, and human resource management policies that will result in optimum job satisfaction and productivity, managers need to know what employees value” (Karl & Sutton, p.515, 1998). Different organizations have used different techniques for studying the job dissatisfaction of their staff. The most common and easy method among those procedures to know about the job satisfaction was questionnaire method (Hong & Chao, pp. 10-12, 2007). Organizations prepare questionnaires to meet definite objectives and collect information that would have been not easy to collect otherwise. If the organizations that are desperate to make their business streamlined and extremely productive are not cautious about their staff’s attitude and do not take steps to know about their difficulties may suffer high staff turnover. There are a number of reasons for employee’s dissatisfaction and to identify those causes questionnaire is a very effective method. Many employees are hesitant to display their identity during such surveys and for this purpose; organizations mostly prefer to use Job Descriptive Index (JDI) questionnaires for such surveys because it does not require the respondent to disclose his or her identity (Khatri & Fern, pp. 1-10, 2001). Few experts introduced Job Descriptive Index (JDI) in the year 1969 (Karl & Sutton, p.515, 1998) and organizations use it very frequently to measure the job satisfaction of their employees. Approximately 1000 organizations have used this procedure since its introduction in late 1960s. It is a very convenient and most commonly used method. It is tremendously simple to use with every kind of respondents that are employees in this case. This specific questionnaire uses five aspects to measure the satisfaction level of the employee: “remuneration, promotion opportunities, supervision, nature of the work itself and relationship with colleagues and has 72 total items” (Karl & Sutton, p.515, 1998). This questionnaire offers simple questions with simple answers to the respondents. It asks the responded if his or her remuneration is satisfactory or not, if he or she is provided with enough promotion opportunities, if the employee is gratified with the supervision and the behavior of the co-workers. Apart from the above-mentioned five areas, Job Descriptive Index also comprise of a separate scale containing eighteen total items that measures the overall satisfaction level of the employee named as Job In General (JIG) scale. JDI do not require the employee to tell is or her position in the organization that helps the employee to answer the questions without any hesitation. This method has also an advantage of being inexpensive. Because of being in the written format this method is more likely to have a 100 percent response rate. This questionnaire can use two type of methodology for the survey that is internet and paper pencil to access the respondents according to the budget of the user (Khatri & Fern, pp. 1-5, 2001). Organization must use the methodology that is more convenient for the employees. Internet is more popular than on paper method due to less cost, administrative simplicity, and availability. There is no wastage of resources in using internet and will more likely to generate high response rate. Rowsnoski (pp. 20-34, 1992) in 1989 made a number of changes in the Job Descriptive Index procedure according to modern technology. One of the drawbacks offered by this index is its lengthiness as it contains 72 items. It also does not provide much information about the about the matters like independence, innovation and other aspect related to the work environment. There may be more than the five factors related to the job satisfaction, which are not included in his index. To cope up with such difficulties, organizations must add the required content in the index and making it precise and less lengthy by deleting the irrelevant questions. Organizations may face difficulties in getting 100 percent response from the employees, but they can solve such situation by accessing them through most reliable means. Internet is the most used and dependable means of communication today and less expensive than any other source. In this regard, Job Descriptive Index is the most reliable way to determine the job satisfaction of the employees so far and is most commonly used procedure. It helps a great deal in reducing turnover rate and in retaining the most productive employees. References Allen, D. 2002. “Solutions and Strategies for IT Recruitment and Retention: A Manager's Guide.” Public Personnel Management. Volume 31, Issue 1, pp. 27. Brough, P. & Frame, P. 2004. “Predicting Police Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions: the role of Social Support and Police Organizational Variables.” New Zealand Journal of Psychology. Volume 28, Issue 2, pp. 321-336. Cranny, J., Smith, P. & Stone, E. P. 1992. 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