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job Satisfaction: Find Satisfaction At Your Current Job

Enjoy Your Job More—Or Know When It’s Time For A Change
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com Guide
Updated November 07, 2007
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical
Review Board
Be Clear About Job Requirements:
It’s nearly impossible to do a good enough job at your work if you don’t know
what the requirements are. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s difficult to know all of
the requirements at a job when those in charge are poor communicators. Some
bosses and supervisors are vague with expectations, assign new tasks with little
advance notice, request new tasks without providing training, and inadvertently set
workers up to fail in other ways. While you can’t prevent things like this from
happening altogether, you can gain a clearer view of what you need to do and help
your situation quite a bit with assertive communication skills. Learn to speak up
for yourself in a respectful way and you’ll improve your work life and your
relationship, and decrease your risk for burnout.
Find Rewards and Recognition:
We all need to feel recognized and rewarded for what we do. If your job doesn’t
have built-in opportunities for recognition, or if rewards are infrequent, you may
need to add rewards and recognition to your own life. You may decide to take
yourself to a movie, have a home spa experience, buy yourself something nice, or
give yourself other small but nurturing rewards when you complete a project or
complete another month of hard work. You can also team up with a supportive
friend and agree tolisten to each other’s successes and provide support to one
another if you don’t get that support and recognition from your job. These things
can nurture you emotionally and remind you of the importance of the work you do,
especially if you work in a job or field where these rewards are sparse.
Maintain a Balanced Lifestyle:
Keeping balance in your lifestyle is important; if it’s all work and no play, you
may find your ability to work beginning to wane. In order to maintain balance in
your lifestyle, the first step is to take an overview of your current lifestyle and see
which areas are out of balance. Do you have enough time
for relationships, hobbies, sleep, self care, exercise,healthy eating, and other
important features of a healthy lifestyle, in addition to your work responsibilities?
If not, the next step is to look at your priorities and make some changes so that
your lifestyle reflects them better. (You can find tools for doing this at the end
ofthis quiz, or with this free e-course.)
Think Positive: 
You can usually change your experience of your current circumstances by
changing your attitude about them. Developing an optimistic point of view and
changing negative self talk patterns can go a long way toward helping you see the
glass half-full, as well as actually making you more productive and less
stressed! Assess your current state of mind, andmake some changes in yourself so
that you see things in a more positive light, and you may just find you’re much
happier where you are in life!

Know Yourself and Work With Your Personality:


Certain features of your personality make some jobs a better fit for you than others.
If you’re in a job that’s not well-suited for your personality, you may be putting
yourself under unnecessary stress every day you go to work. The following are
some good questions to ask yourself:

 Do you like to work toward deadlines, or do you like your tasks to come in a
relatively steady stream?
 Do you like to work as part of a team, or independently?
 Do you like things to be structured and routine, or loose and variable?
 Do you enjoy being a ‘big fish in a small pond’, or would you like to be a
‘small fish in a big pond’? (Meaning, would you like to be a small part of a large
company or a large part of a small company, or something else?)
 Do you believe in what you do, and is it important to you that you do?
These questions and others can give you a better picture of what kind of work
would be best for you. If you find you’re not in the type of position that’s ideal for
you, you can see if you can make additional changes in your job’s structure to
make it fit better with your needs, or you might think of what jobs might be better
suited for you and see if working toward a change in jobs is a good idea for you.
For more information on job burnout and the factors that contribute to it, visit
the Job Burnout Section. If you’re wondering whether you’re at risk for job
burnout, or to what degree, take The Job Burnout Quiz.

Keys to Employee Satisfaction
What You Can Do to Increase Employee Satisfaction
By Susan M. Heathfield, About.com Guide
Americans of all ages and income brackets continue to grow increasingly unhappy at work — a long-term trend that should
seriously concern employers, according to a report by The Conference Board. The report, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S.
households conducted for The Conference Board by TNS, finds only 45 percent of those surveyed say they are satisfied with
their jobs, down from 61.1 percent in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted.

The Bad News About Employee Satisfaction

While overall employee satisfaction has declined to 45%, the percentage of employees satisfied with their jobs is lowest in the
under 25 age group with only 35.7% satisfied. Among employees in the age group 25-34, 47.2% are satisfied; employees in the
age group 35-44 scored 43.4% in job satisfaction. Employees in the 45-54 age range scored 46.8%; employees 55-64 scored in
employee satisfaction at 45.6% and of those employees age 65 and over, 43.4% are satisfied.

Implications for Employers of Falling Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction at work has decreased significantly in the past twenty years, as these figures indicate – and I predict
employee satisfaction will get worse in the next few years. A combination of events is creating a perfect storm affecting
employee satisfaction.

A generation of employees who feel entitled to employee satisfaction has entered the workforce and several generations of
employees for whom work never quite fulfilled their dreams, are leaving. And, they are leaving in the worst of economic times
which will affect their satisfaction with the rest of the quality of life they experience.

This downward trend in job satisfaction raises concerns about the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately
employee productivity, retention, creativity, risk-taking, mentoring, and in overall employee motivation and interest in work.

“These numbers do not bode well given the multi-generational dynamics of the labor force,” says Linda Barrington, managing
director, Human Capital, The Conference Board. “The newest federal statistics show that baby boomers will compose a quarter
of the U.S. workforce in eight years, and since 1987 we’ve watched them increasingly losing faith in the workplace.” Twenty
years ago,60% of Baby Boomers were satisfied with their jobs; today only 46% are. Barrington expresses concern about the
growing lack of employee satisfaction because of its potential impact on knowledge transfer to and mentoring for the next
generations of employees.

According to the Conference Board’s survey results announcement, “The drop in job satisfaction between 1987 and 2009 covers
all categories in the survey, from interest in work (down 18.9 percentage points) to job security (down 17.5 percentage points)
and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality, and
extrinsic rewards.”

What Employers Can Do About Employee Satisfaction

In this environment for employee satisfaction, it is vitally important to know which factors most affect employee satisfaction.
You want to spend your time, money, and energy on programs, processes, and factors that will have a positive impact on
employee satisfaction. A 2009 survey, by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)looked at 24 factors that are
regularly thought to relate to employee satisfaction. The study found that employees identified these five most important factors:
 job security,
 benefits (especially health care) with the importance of retirement benefits rising with age of the employee,
 compensation/pay,
 opportunities to use skills and abilities, and
 feeling safe in the work environment.

The next five most important satisfaction factors for employees were:

 relationship with immediate supervisor,


 management recognition of employee job performance,
 communication between employees and senior management,
 the work itself, and
 autonomy and independence.

Factors that did were not strongly connected to employee satisfaction included: “the organization’s commitment to a ‘green’
workplace, networking, career development opportunities, paid training and tuition reimbursement programs, and organization’s
commitment to professional development.”

In contrast, Human Resources professionals ranked these ten factors as most important in employee satisfaction:

 job security,
 relationship with immediate supervisor,
 benefits,
 communication between employees and senior management,
 opportunities to use skills and abilities,
 management recognition of employee job performance,
 job-specific training,
 feeling safe in the work environment,
 compensation/pay, and
 overall corporate culture.

I’ve consolidated for you the results of employee satisfaction surveys and their implications for the workplace. Most importantly,
I have provided research data that defines the factors most important to employees as you continue to seek to provide a
workplace that emphasizes employee satisfaction as a recruiting and retention tool. Use the data to your best advantage.

Identifying Your Work Values


Clarifying Your Work Values Leads to Job Satisfaction
By Dawn Rosenberg McKay, About.com Guide

What Are Work Values

Throughout your life you acquired a set of values — beliefs and ideas that are important to you. For example you may believe
that one should always be honest or that one must always be a loyal friend. You live your life according to this set of values. In
order to have a happy, successful and fulfilling life, you must act upon your values, both in your personal life and at work.
Taking your values into account when you choose a career could be the most important factor that determines whether you will
or won't be satisfied with that aspect of your life.

Clarifying your work values, that subset of values that relate to your career, is essential. Your work values are both intrinsic,
relating to the actual tasks involved in practicing a particular occupation, and extrinsic, relating to the by-products of an
occupation. An intrinsic value might be helping others, while an example of an extrinsic value is earning a lot of money.

How to Identify Work Values

Career development professionals, including career counselors and career development facilitators, use work value inventories to
measure how important various work values are to you. Generally, a work value inventory is simply a list of values that you are
asked to rate. For example, the instructions may tell you to rate each value on a scale of one to 10, giving a one to those values
that are most important to you and a 10 to those that are least important. Alternatively, you may be asked to list a series of work
values in order of importance.
The results of a work value inventory are used to identify appropriate career choices, by matching an individual's work values
with characteristics of occupations. A work value inventory is best used in conjunction with other self assessment instruments
that help identify one's personality, interests and skills.

Examples and Definitions of Work Values

Here are examples of items that could appear on a work value inventory, along with a definition of each one. When reading this
list, think about how important each value is to you.

 Autonomy: receiving no or little supervision


 Helping Others: providing assistance to individuals or groups
 Prestige: having high standing
 Job Security: a high probability that one will remain employed
 Collaboration: working with others
 Helping Society: contributing to the betterment of the world
 Recognition: receiving attention for your work
 Compensation: receiving adequate pay
 Achievement: doing work that yields results
 Utilizing Your Skills and Background: using your education and work experience to do your job
 Leadership: supervising/managing others
 Creativity: using your own ideas
 Variety: doing different activities
 Challenge: performing tasks that are difficult
 Leisure: having adequate time away from work
 Recognition: receiving credit for achievements
 Artistic Expression: expressing one's artistic talents
 Influence: having the ability to affect people's opinions and ideas
Readers Respond: What Contributes to or Destroys Employee Job
Satisfaction?
Responses: 18
By Susan M. Heathfield, 

Employee job satisfaction has trended lower each year for twenty years. So says a recent survey contracted by The Conference
Board. Employee job satisfaction is situational. Employee job satisfaction depends on your company and its practices, your
expectations and needs from work, the quality of your supervision, the health of your industry, the competitiveness of the job
market, the state of the economy, the success of your company, your mentor resources, and more. The variables are what make
employee job satisfaction so challenging. Share what contributes to or destroys employee job satisfaction?

Efforts to Delegate
I constantly strive to provide tasks and job functions to employees that will increase their awareness of the larger scope
of the operation and provide them a sense of satisfaction in completing a job. But, what I find is that I am constantly
following up and often completing the project myself or reassigning it to another person because they "don't want to do
it". They want to play on the computer, study or just hangout. Hourly wage college students are what my non-profit
museum budget allows. :( And the work ethic among today's younger generation is deplorable.

—stabornc

Nepotism
There's this organization where most employees are blood relatives, therefore you lose a sense of belonging when you
join. This also affects the level of pay. One earns less irrespective of the qualification and experience simply because
one is not related to the "owners" of the business

—Guest Kepher
Move Their Limits
It's interesting to read this post in light of the book I just read, "Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to
Give It Their All, and They'll Give You Even More." The book declares that what people really want is meaningful
work that stretches them beyond their current abilities--goals that force them to learn new skills and work hard.
According to the research in the book, that's ultimately what motivates people--and the lack of it demotivates and
disengages them. It's a contrarian viewpoint that I haven't seen before and is worth considering.

—Guest Heath Davis Havlick

Gain Employee Discretionary Energy


Communication is so important. If you treat employees only as labor costs and not as a valuable part of the whole
picture, then you will get what you deserve: an employee who just wants to do enough to get by. Communicate and
share your ideas, problems and concerns and they will want to contribute to your success. The smartest person I ever
worked for said: If your company is in trouble, give everyone a raise. Share with them what is happening and what they
can to do and you will always get the best possible results.

—gayle4711

Shift in Value of Employees


I've been working for a government agency for 15+ years and the most disturbing trend is a shift from valuing training,
education and training to an environment where management finds fault with employees and instead of coaching and
teaching to correct behavior, management uses investigations where management questions employees, analyzes the
results and then determines punishment that ranges from verbal reprimand to 2 week suspensions. These consequences
are given with no opportunity for the "defendant" to answer to or explain before the punishment is given out. I realize
governments are working with tight budgets but controlling a workforce with fear is not the answer. It would be
interesting to see how many more people in this environment are on anti-depressants or other medications just to
tolerate such a hostile work environment. These tight controls are taking a toll on the loyalty of the staff. People who
would have worked for free to finish a project no longer care to help.

—Nicks63

Incompetent managers
Incompetent people from the top management are the root cause of competent employees' dissatisfaction.

—Guest Mary ann

Satisfacation From Bottom to the Top


In this new job market you never know when you are going to be laid off. It is important that employers do not use
threats to get employees to work harder, longer and for less pay. When there is a response to a job well done from
upper management, whether it is a genuine handwritten note or a small gift card to Starbucks, Americans want to be
employed but not under the gun. Saying things like, 'You should be happy you have a job' or 'Somebody who doesn't
have a job won't have a problem doing this' creates disloyalty and performance levels deteriorate.

—Guest 30303

Job Satisfaction
Well, from my own point of view, I feel that lack of commitment and recognition of employees contributes. Therefore,
as a result of this, the employees feel like leaving.

—Guest emmanuel ashinaga

Double Standard
When a different yardstick applies to different workers at different times - can very well demoralize workers.
—Guest Amrede, Joe

Broken Promises
In our company, promises are made to "hush" the employees. Later, the promises/policies are rescinded when
employees try to use them.

—Guest t michele

All of the Above


I realized I need to look for another job as soon as the economy is in better shape... even slightly!

—Guest AM

Unknown Rewards
In our case, we have incentive programs that are not communicated well enough, or written clearly enough, so
employees are not sure what to expect. This causes the employee to lose motivation and satisfaction in their job. They
are very frustrated due to this.

—Guest Scott

Inconsistent Policy - Gossip


In my company, there are inconsistent benefits applied among team members so employees start complaining and
leaving. Besides, the owner believes in gossip a lot.

—Guest Jessica Lam

Lack Of Sleep Lowers Job Satisfaction

This summer, it has been too hot to sleep for several nights. I know that as a result, I am a little less energetic on the job and, I
suspect, my judgment isn't as quick as it might be. Now, according to a study at the University of Florida to be published in
the Journal of Management, I've got more to worry about.

The study found that lack of sleep made people cranky and irritable of the job, which is not surprising. However, the study also
reported that employees who had slept poorly also reported significantly lower job satisfaction.

The researchers suggest that employers should avoid requiring extended overtime if they want to keep their employees happy and
motivated. I think that is short-sighted. Many people who work heavy overtime sleep very well. The problem is not with the
overtime, it’s with lack of sleep.

People who work normal hours also may have difficulty sleeping, and thus experience lower job satisfaction per this study. That
poor sleep could be caused by many factors, such as stress, lack of exercise, or consumption of stimulants like coffee and alcohol.

While it is not the manager’s job to make sure each employee gets a good night’s sleep, a smart manager will be aware of lack of
sleep as one factor in decreased employee performance and now, as reported in this study, as one factor in decreased job
satisfaction. Both performance and satisfaction issues require the manager’s action before they develop into problems.

Employee Satisfaction Falling


January is International Quality of Life Month and work is a contributing factor to any quality we may experience in our lives.
It's not just the hours that we spend at work; it is our investment in our work as a a definition of whom we are that is key. Go to
any party or networking event. What's the first question you are asked? What do you do is frequently the opening line.

So, quality of life is affected heavily by our satisfaction at work and in the work-life balance that our employer facilitates - or not.
According to today's new lead article, employees are experiencing less job satisfaction now than in any time during the past
twenty years. My article addresses this. I believe that every individual deserves the opportunity to create a high quality life. I
believe employers can facilitate that - not provide it.
Additional research from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) indicates a less bleak picture and suggests the
factors in employee motivation that are most important to employees. You'll also want to note the difference between what
employees cite as the most important impacts on employee satisfaction and the list generated by Human Resources staff. The
details are in the article: Keys to Employee Satisfaction.

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