Job Design and Satisfaction - Essay Example

Case Study Introduction Job satisfaction of an employee simply describes how content or happy he is with is job, work environment, management and payscale (Bakotic, 2014). A traditional statement says that happy employees are productive employees. As much as this is true, the determinants of satisfaction also differ from person to person. There lies a clear connection between the personality type and the satisfaction determinants. Some employees are happy with low work pressure, whereas other workaholic employees feel comfortable around a busy and hectic schedule. This study is focused on the job satisfaction level of some workaholic employees working in different fields. One thing which is common among them is that they all love their jobs, even if they are apparently difficult to others. Job design and satisfaction Characteristics of the job that might contribute to high level of job satisfaction in the given examples. How satisfaction level of employees in the given cases are related to theoretical aspects. All the job profiles mentioned in the examples are apparently tough and hectic, which provides challenging situations and huge work load. They also demands extensive attention and time devotion to an employee’s work life. In general, most of the employees would face exhaustion and burn out while working in this schedule (Burke & MacDermid, 1999), but these individuals mentioned in the examples, are driven by challenge and they are motivated by high target fulfilment. All of them work in respectable and well renowned companies and in reputable positions. Although, they have very little time for personal life, and their work-life balance is reduced to a minimum, they enjoy their work life more than their personal life. These individuals are all self-motivated; they are driven by tough challenges and high achievement of success. According to Douglas, and Morris (2006), most workaholic people work for personal desire, they are rarely driven by the future outcome, rather what pushes them is the need to complete their task and reach their goal. They all push themselves out of their comfort zone, to achieve what most of the people cannot. Some of the jobs allow the employees to travel all around the world, which is preferred by a workaholic employee, but is seen as a hectic scheduled job by an average one. According to Koçoglu, Gürkan, and Aktas (2014) challenging workload is one of the factors of job satisfaction. Workload can be overwhelming to employees if it exceeds the employees’ working ability. Eventually, it causes job dissatisfaction and psychological withdrawal from the job. On the other hand, too little work load can cause job dissatisfaction too, because the employee eventually feels frustrated and their morale goes down (Koçoglu, Gürkan, and Aktas, 2014). However, in the given cases, all the individuals perceive their job to be challenging, which makes them interested in their jobs. Job culture and job satisfaction Considering the example of John Bishop, he works at the Citigroup as an investment banker. The work culture of an investment bank can be described by Schein’s Levels of Culture (Toigo, 2010). Edgar Schein suggested that, there are three levels in an organization’s culture. Firstly, the Typical Organizational Behaviour, which is the external manifestation of the culture and practices (Douglas & Morris, 2006). In this case, Citigroup’s investment banking sector offers very hectic schedule. John travels throughout the day, attending conferences and again gets back to office to work for addition three hours. This reflects that, this job profile asks for severe time devotion and extensive travelling. Here an employee works around 100 hours a week on an average. Secondly, the Values of an organization are the underlying factors which are not directly observable, but play an important role in organizational culture (Akdere and Schmidt, 2007). In this case, a job of an investment banker is, meeting targets and talk in “numbers”. Their achievements are always quantified and are easily measurable; this creates internal competition among employees. The competitive environment often becomes fierce and as a result, it becomes unbearable for most of the employees. Thirdly, the Fundamental Assumptions are the core factors which build up the perception of an organization’s culture (Akdere and Schmidt, 2007). Profession of an investment banker involves high risk; the performance of an individual is somehow dependent on the financial market’s rise or fall. The customer’s interest is always subject to fluctuations, this leads to risk of failure in deal closing (McNamara, 2000). These factors of the organizational culture play an important role in the job satisfaction of John Bishop. The hectic travelling and tight schedule needs his time and energy devotion, which every workaholic loves as it provides them with a heavy work load. John feels a sense satisfaction on task completion, this drives him every day to go through the hectic schedule. The quantifiable achievements in an investment bank, makes it easy for John to set his daily targets and make a run for it. Moreover, like for all workaholics, the largely competitive environment among the employees, acts as a challenge to John (Morin, 2014). Overcoming the challenge leaves John with a sense of superiority over other employees, and eventually, leads to job satisfaction. Finally, the risk factors involved in his job makes it even more challenging for him. Workaholic employees are prone to risk taking. This risk taking mentality usually comes from high self believe in their own potential. John has a very high optimistic view towards risk taking, because he believes that he is capable of controlling the situation in his favour. Thus, it can be seen that the organization culture is in line with the job satisfaction factors for John. His job profile provides him with all the necessary factors, which makes him satisfied (Kosevic, 2012). Personality traits and job satisfaction Job satisfaction is highly dependent on the personality traits of the individual (Su-Chao and Ming-Shing, 2006). A job which is satisfying to one may be frustrating to the other, so the key determinant of job satisfaction is the personality of the employee. The personality traits can be described by the Big Five Model. This model is composed of five basic dimensions, which underlie and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality (Lounsbury, et al., 2009). 1) Extraversion: This dimension captures the comfort level with relationships. People who are high on extraversion tend to be social, gregarious and assertive; they value personal relationships (Lounsbury, et al., 2009). The individuals mentioned in these examples are low on extraversion. They do not prioritize relationships or social bonding. Most of their attention is taken up by their work. Another important reason is that, they hardly get any time for social activities, or even for their family. When it comes to a trade off between their social life and job, they usually choose their job, so being low on extraversion, they are not distracted by their social life, and they can concentrate on their work life with full attention, which in turn leads to job satisfaction. 2) Agreeableness: Agreeableness refers to one’s propensity to defer to others. People who are high on agreeableness are warm, cooperative and trusting (Lounsbury, et al., 2009). These individuals are medium on agreeableness. They often show cooperativeness with their colleagues in the work domain, but their high competitive nature often leads to self centred behaviour. They will not hesitate being cold to someone if that person is acting as a barrier to their pursuit of success or work life. Thus they are able to push themselves up in the competitive ladder by selective cooperation with their colleagues which eventually leads to success and job satisfaction. 3) Conscientiousness: Conscientiousness is a measure of reliability. A person high on conscientiousness is organized, responsible, persistent and dependable (Lounsbury, et al., 2009). These individuals take all the job responsibilities seriously and they also make sure that the tasks are done properly and in time. Their work life is highly organized and scheduled. Everything they do is planned and all their activities are time bound. The management can rely on them with any job that they are given. Their highly organized form of lifestyle helps them to go through toughest of job situations; this in turn gives them a sense of victory and eventually leads to job satisfaction. 4) Emotional Stability: Emotional stability measures an individual’s ability to withstand stress. People with high emotional stability are self confident, mentally secure and calm. These individuals have extremely high emotional stability (Lounsbury, et al., 2009). An average individual, if exposed to their work schedule, would easily get overwhelmed, frustrated and would tend to quit the job. On the other hand, people like David Clark or Irene Tse hold extreme ability to withstand job related stress. Their 100 hour per week work schedule is usual for them, which will make an average individual to burn out (ODonnell, 2014). Being highly emotionally stable and resilient to stress, allows them to perform better than others. This gives them a sense of superiority among the other colleagues and eventually leads to job satisfaction. 5) Openness to experience: Openness to experience is the dimension that addresses a range of interests and fascinations with novelty. People who are high on “openness” are creative, curious and fearless (Lounsbury, et al., 2009). All of these individuals are high on openness to experience. They welcome new experience and thrive to have something new. Any change in the organization is perceived as a challenge and eventually overcoming the challenge leads to job satisfaction. These individuals, being highly open to new experience are fearless to take up challenging job roles or face tough situations. This makes them the stand out of the crowd and they are recognized as the “go getters” in the organization, as a result this reward of recognition gives them job satisfaction. Thus, it is clearly stated that, the individuals mentioned in the examples have the right personality traits which align with their job requirement and organizational culture (Glicken, 2014). Benefits of Job Satisfaction Job performance: The high levels of job satisfaction for these individuals drive them to give more commitment to their work. They devote more time, energy and attention to their work than any average employee as a result it better job performance and meeting organizational goals and targets. (Judge et al. 2001). Organizational Support: The high levels of job satisfaction allow these individuals to devote more time to their work which leads to more output which every organization would want. These types of workaholic individuals are not easily available and there are only few present in an organization. The organization realizing that its overall performance has a significant share of their effort, does everything possible to keep these employees happy and content. They are often supported with perks, appreciations and recognition. The organization tries its level best to keep them motivated at their work (Edmans, 2012). The possibility of them leaving the organization: These individuals have high levels of job satisfaction from their current job and organization, so they are less likely to leave the organization. However, if they find another job where they believe they can experience higher job satisfaction, they will not hesitate to switch to that job. Thus the tendency of satisfied employees to leave the organization is moderate (Perrachione, Rosser & Petersen, 2008). General Attitudes and Behaviour: These individuals are highly satisfied with their job roles and work environment. The high job satisfaction makes them more engaged to their work and ignore their personal life. They often take their work home and discuss it with family members, irrespective of their interest. As they are motivated by success, they often involve themselves in problem solving situations and they perceive “time off” to be a big waste of time, because, they measure time by the productive output. However, they are extremely enthusiastic in their work environment and they are ready to take any work related challenges without hesitation (Themotivator, 2014). Conclusion and Lessons Learnt It can be observed that job satisfaction is a result of a combination of several factors, which include proper job-skill alignment, supportive work environment, proper pay scale and right amount of work load (Bakotic, 2014). The organizational culture supports job satisfaction for all the employee types. Managers should keep an eye on the attitude of their employees, as it reflects the potential problems of job dissatisfaction. There is a lower rate of absenteeism and resignation among the satisfied employees and they perform better at jobs (Bakotic, 2014). The productive and workaholic employees seek for a challenging and competitive work environment, which results in positive work attitude among them. The job satisfaction for the employees can be increased by focussing on the intrinsic parts of the job. As different employees have different personality traits, they should be given workloads and job responsibilities which are best suited for them. An average employee will want to have a proper work life balance with manageable work load, whereas, a workaholic will want his job to be challenging, interesting and more exhausting than others. Higher payment alone does not necessarily guarantee job satisfaction; it should be coupled with other factors like rewards in the form of perks and recognition, proper work environment, right job roles, good bonding with colleagues, etc. Job satisfaction is a consolidated result of proper job design and right personality traits (Bakotic, 2014). Different employees have different personality traits and accordingly the job should be designed and distributed. Recommendation Job satisfaction often differs across the organizational hierarchy. The factor involving the job satisfaction of a higher ranked individual is quite different than that of a lower ranked one. A higher ranked employee may look for factors like new on job experience or new challenges or some may even want to have a proper work life balance. On the other hand, for a lower ranked individual, the job satisfaction can come from working in a healthy work environment, receiving incentives, bonuses, perks, monetary rewards and also recognition. The co-workers also play an important role for a newly joined employee in a lower rank. Support from co-workers and building social bonding will cause positive attitude towards job. So, a manager should design the work culture in such a way, that it promotes bonding among the colleagues. He should also ensure that they are not subjected to excessive work pressure. Work pressure may be motivating to workaholics, but for an average employee it can lead to frustration and eventual resignation of that employee. An individual in a lower rank would often thrive for growth opportunities, so the organization must facilitate opportunities for faster promotions based on their performance. This will result in improvement of their work performance, and also it will act as a motivating factor. Not all lower ranked employees are fascinated to work longer hours, so in order to make them work longer than usual without making them frustrated, the manager should come up with ideas of motivating them. This can be achieved by, setting up examples of employees who have worked hard and moved up in the hierarchy. Once again, job design also plays an important role here. 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