The Importance of Maintaining High Levels of Job Satisfaction for Increasing the Performance Level - Assignment Example

? Discussion on “If you want your Employees to Increase their Level of Performance, You Must Create High Levels of Job Satisfaction. (Institution) (Course) (Tutor) (Date) Discussion on the Importance of Maintaining Relatively High levels of Job Satisfaction so as to be able to Increase the Employees Level of Performance Organizations can be seen to be engaged in a constant endeavor to try and improve the general work performance and productivity levels of all their employees. This increasingly common expectation by all companies and organizations has resulted in there being several concerted efforts over the years by various researchers to try and establish the possible link between employees, behavior and job satisfaction and the impact of this job satisfaction on the overall production of the company (Murray, Poole and Jones, 2006). The main focus of the myriad of researches that have been conducted in relation to this subject has been on attempting to identify exactly what is the main factor that causes employees to increase their level of performance. The relationship between job performance and job satisfaction has not been an easy one for most researchers to establish, although the relationship between the two variables is often seen to be quite logically convincing due to fashion in which it fit into the human relations value system, it was not always easy for some researchers to exactly define what exactly job satisfaction and performance were. This is mainly due to the established fact that if organizations intend to generally improve their employee performance, it is vital that they first ensure that they first create some degree of job satisfaction in order to satisfy their employees, on the other hand, performance is an integral requirement for the creation of job satisfaction. Job Performance In one of the more classic definitions, job performance is defined as the eventual result of a series of patterns of various actions that an individual takes time to carry out with the main intention of attempting to satisfy a given objective inline with a set of established standards. However, it should be noted that performance is quite different form behavior which is seen to basically refer to observable actions. Good job performance is not necessarily the result of an individual observing appropriate job behavior. Job performance essentially consists of a set of three key interrelated elements, these elements are mainly the context, the activity and the individual. In order for one to effect some degree of improved job performance, it is essential that change takes place in one or a combination of these three elements (Rothswell and Kazanas, 2003). In order to establish what job performance is; it is of critical importance to first have an appropriate conceptualization of what exactly is performance. Without the establishment of what does or does not happen to rightfully constitute of job performance in any given context, it will not be possible to provide any job performance ratings. Some of the more historical pointers used in rating an individuals job performance have been seen to include diverse judgments on aspects such as job behavior, job outcomes and results as well as the person’s own individual traits. In the establishment of a persons job performance ratings, the use of behavioral measures has been proposed by several researchers providing the most accurate results for the proper indexing of an individual’s job success as compared to the use of results measures (Hersen and Thomas, 2003). Although the establishment of performance ratings has long been mainly based on the rater’s personal judgment of the perceived typical or average performance of the target, it has been noted by some appraisal scholars that performance can be regarded as a dynamic criterion that tends to exhibit various intra-individual variables over a given time (Hersen and Thomas, 2003). When establishing an employees job performance ratings, it is possible to obtain more information if the rating procedure is designed in a manner that it contain various judgments pertaining to the target’s multiple aspects of job behavior. It should however be noted that the rating instrument’s specific format, generally does not have a profound impact on the eventual quality of the ratings that are obtained (Hersen and Thomas, 2003). Job Satisfaction Job satisfaction is usually regarded as being the most widely investigated job attributes. There has been considerable debate as to the proper definition of job satisfaction. Most researchers have proposed to define job satisfaction as being basically an effective reaction by an individual to a job. This emotional reaction is found to be mainly based on the individual’s comparison of the work outcomes he has managed to achieved as compared to those which they had desired to achieve. The debate as to the definition of job satisfaction is seen to have various important methodology implications as to how job satisfaction is measured (Buchanan and Bryman, 2009). As there is no specifically agreed general definition of job satisfaction, job satisfaction questionnaires are designed to try and ascertain the degree of satisfaction achieved in various work aspects as well as the resultant behavior on completion of tasks at hand (Saiyadain, 2009). Employee Performance and Job Satisfaction According to (Jex and Britt, 2008), most of the earlier debate as to the exact relation between job performance and job satisfaction was majorly based on opinion as opposed to being based on empirical data. However, this basis gradually began to change during the 1970s and well into the 1980s when more researchers conducted various investigations attempting to establish the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction. (Jex and Britt, 2008) go on to further point out that when individuals happen to report the same level of job satisfaction, they usually tend to hold this attitude with the same level of strength, and as such, we should essentially not expect to help in the accurate prediction of performance if individuals do not in anyway exhibit a degree of consistency between the various different components of job satisfaction. Research on the subject of establishing a relationship between job satisfaction and job performance has been seen to be quite controversial with various researchers posting different views, According to (Murray, Poole and Jones, 2006) the majority of most of the reviews conducted to try and ascertain this relationship have shown that there exists a relatively weak relationship between job performance and job satisfaction. As (Murray, Poole and Jones, 2006) point out, there are about four possible reasons for this trend in the observations include the fact that general attitudes such as job satisfaction are generally not good at accurately predicting specific behaviors. However, there still remains a prevalent misconception among most lay people and managers that support that proposition that happy workers are also generally productive workers. Secondly, there has also been the argument that makes the proposition that job performance is more closely related to psychological well being as opposed to its being related to job satisfaction which happens to be more situation-specific. Thirdly, it has been argued most researchers and managers have for long been wrongly focused on an inappropriate type of performance. Research has shown that job satisfaction has mostly been found to be more related to discretionary work behaviors which tend to indirectly affect performance. Lastly, it can be argued that it is job performance that actually influences job satisfaction as opposed to job satisfaction influencing job performance, However, this is only applicable when performance happens to be linked to various valued rewards (Murray, Poole and Jones, 2006). On the other hand, some researchers argue that increased job satisfaction leads to improved job performance. This premise is seen to be largely supported by research that shows that when both productivity and satisfaction data happen to be gathered for the entire organization as a whole, It has been shown that organization’s that happen to have more satisfied employees generally tend to have higher levels of efficiency as compared to those organizations with fewer numbers of satisfied employees. According to (Reckers, 2006), the positive relationship that exists between job satisfaction and effective job performance is found to strengthened by research that has shown that dissatisfied subordinates in an organization are found to be more likely to decide to not perform well in their various tasks as compared to their more satisfied counterparts. When an employee is dissatisfied with their job, this tendency is most likely to lead to poor levels of job performance. The basis of most of the findings supporting the link between job performance and job satisfaction is mostly attributed to the fact that here is a higher possibility for the subordinates working in an organization and happen to be relatively highly satisfied with their jobs, to try and exert more positive additional effort so as to perform effectively. It has been suggested that increased effort on the part of employees generally lead to improved job performance (Reckers, 2006). It should be noted that Job satisfaction is also greatly co-related to other work related attributes that help in further boosting an employees job productivity. This includes aspects such as proper organizational citizenship behavior that is regarded as a mainly positive emotional state that is seen to be commonly derived from the various job experiences of an employee. It is a resultant effect of these other attributes such as organizational citizenship behavior and increased pay and their impact on the general performance of employees that has resulted in most researchers considering it a fallacy to assume that increased job satisfaction will automatically result in improved job performance. The impact of these attributes on job performance should not be overlooked. Of these attributes and their effect on job satisfaction and eventual job performance includes; Workers who happen to be satisfied with their jobs tend to be less likely to face any accidents. This is as compared to dissatisfied the dissatisfied workers in an organization. Various other studies also show that employees who are highly satisfied generally tend to have higher efficiency ratings as compared to their dissatisfied colleagues. This degree of efficiency allows them to be well adjusted to their assigned roles a factor which helps improve their job performance. Job satisfaction has also been closely linked to absenteeism in employees a factor that has a direct impact on the job performance levels of most organizations (Borkowski, 2011). It has been shown that the overall rate of absenteeism generally tend to reduce as one moves from the higher executive and managerial levels of an organization which experience relatively very low levels of absenteeism to the supervisory levels which experience intermediate absenteeism results to the lower technical workers levels which generally tend to experience very high levels of absenteeism. In an average organizational job satisfaction hierarchy, managers are usually categorized as being them most satisfied employees, they are then closely followed by the workers working at the supervisory levels while the technical staff are usually at the lowest level. A satisfied worker will tend to have a more positive attitude towards work in general and as a result of this, they will try and avoid being unnecessarily absent from work. This essentially does not mean that workers who happen to be satisfied with their job will never be absent, however, these employees will have lower absenteeism rates than their dissatisfied counterparts. Conclusion The study of the link between job satisfaction and job performance is quite challenging and has experienced a lot of debate over time. This has caused it to become commonly referred to as the holy grail of research (Murray, Poole and Jones, 2006). The various studies conducted on not only job performance but also on employee job satisfaction have been quite instrumental in providing deeper insight into the development of a more constructive approach into how organizations should attempt to run their operations so as to achieve high job satisfaction levels among their employees and as a result, manage to secure effective job performance. However, it is critical to note that job satisfaction is greatly affected by various attributes such as proper organizational citizenship behavior. As it has been show in this paper, there exists a link between job satisfaction and the eventual improved job performance of a company’s employees, however, more research needs to be conducted into this “holy grail” of organizational research so as to establish results that will be universally agreed upon. Bibliography Borkowski, N. 2011. Organizational behavior in health care. Sudbury, Mass. : Jones and Bartlett Publishers. 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