Chapter 10

Satisfaction, Engagement,
and Potential

-Hi ll Education. All right s reserv ed. Authorized onl y for instructor use in t he cl assroom. No reproduction or furt her di st ri bution permitted wi thout the prior written consent of McGraw-Hil l Education.
 Chapter Outline
• Introduction
• Understanding and influencing follower satisfaction
• Understanding and improving employee engagement
• Understanding follower potential

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 Satisfaction, Engagement, and Potential
Too many highly trained, committed professionals return again
and again to the methodology that employee engagement
programs are what “WE might do to make THEM feel invested in
US.” They are an H R brand-loyalty marketing program, really.
• Mark Kille, human resources consultant

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 Understanding Follower Satisfaction

Satisfied workers are more likely to:

• Continue working for an organization

• Engage in organizational citizenship behaviors that go beyond job
descriptions and role requirements
• Help reduce the workload or stress of others in the organization

Dissatisfied workers are more likely to be adversarial in their

relations with leadership and engage in diverse
counterproductive behaviors

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 Employee Turnover
Has the most immediate impact on leadership practitioners

Functional turnover is considered healthy for an organization

• Examples: When followers retire, do not fit into the organization, or
are substandard workers

Dysfunctional turnover is unhealthy and occurs when an

organization’s best and brightest become dissatisfied and leave
• Most likely to occur when downsizing is the response to
organizational decline

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 Table 10.1: Why People Leave or Stay with Organizations

Why Do People Leave Organizations? Why Do People Stay with Organizations?

Limited recognition and praise Promises long-term employment
Compensation Exciting work and challenge
Limited authority Fair pay
Poor organizational culture Encourages fun, collegial relationships
Repetitive work Supportive management
Sources: www.sigmaassessmentsystems.com; Pace Communication, Hemispheres Magazine, November 1994, p. 155; “Keeping Workers Happy,” USA Today, February 10, 1998, p. 1; B.
G. Graves, “Why People Quit Their Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, September 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/09/why-people-quit-their-jobs; B. Kaye and S. Jordan-Evans, Love ‘Em or
Lose Em: Getting Good People to Stay, 5th ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2014).

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 Items Found on Job Satisfaction Surveys
• Global satisfaction: Assesses the overall degree to which
employees are satisfied with their organization and their job
• Facet satisfaction: Assesses the degree to which employees
are satisfied with different aspects of work, such as pay,
benefits, promotion policies, and working hours and
conditions
• Life satisfaction: Concerns a person’s attitudes about life in
general

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 Table 10.2: Typical Items on a Satisfaction
Questionnaire
These items are often rated on a scale ranging from strongly disagree, or 1, to
strongly agree, or 5
1. Overall, I am satisfied with my job
2. I feel the workload is about equal for everyone in the organization
3. My supervisor handles conflict well
4. My pay and benefits are comparable to those in other organizations
5. There is a real future for people in this organization if they apply themselves
6. Exceptional performance is rewarded in this organization
7. We have a good health care plan in this organization
8. In general, I am satisfied with my life and where it is going

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 Global and Facet Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction
Surveys
Important findings on global and facet satisfaction
• People generally tend to be happy with their occupation, but may
not like the pay, benefits or their boss
• Hierarchy effect: People with longer tenure or in higher positions
tend to have higher global and facet satisfaction ratings than those
newer to or lower in the organization

Job satisfaction surveys are used extensively in both public and

private institutions
• Survey results are most useful when compared with results from a
reference group, such as an organization’s past results or ratings
from similar organizations
• Based on the survey results, leaders must be willing to take action
or risk losing credibility and actually increasing job dissatisfaction

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 Theories of Job Satisfaction: Organizational Justice
Based on the premise that people who are treated unfairly are
less satisfied, productive, and committed to their organizations
• Likely to initiate collective action and engage in counterproductive
work behaviors

Components
• Interactional justice: Degree to which people are given information
about reward procedures and are treated with dignity and respect
• Distributive justice: Concerns followers’ perceptions of whether the
level of reward or punishment is proportionate to an individual’s
performance or infraction
• Procedural justice: Relates to the process that rewards and
punishments are administered

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 Theories of Job Satisfaction: Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Does not assume that the things that dissatisfied people are
always the opposite of what satisfies them

Identifies the following factors of satisfaction:

• Motivators: Factors that led to satisfaction at work

• Hygiene factors: Factors that led to dissatisfaction at work
• Efforts directed toward improving hygiene factors will not increase
followers’ motivation or satisfaction

Key to increasing followers’ satisfaction levels is to just

adequately satisfy the hygiene factors while maximizing the
motivators for a particular job

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 Figure 10.2: Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Jump to Figure 10.2: Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory,

Appendix

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 Understanding and Improving Employee Engagement, 1

Employee engagement: Followers’ attitudes about the

organization and their work activities
• Some aspects of job satisfaction are highly related to employee
engagement
• Fully engaged followers are believed to be more committed to team
and organizational success, put forth more work directed effort, and
put in the hours necessary to complete assigned tasks
• Disengaged followers do not care about organizational success and are
more interested in collecting paychecks than completing work
assignments

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 Understanding and Improving Employee Engagement, 2

Surveys are administered to determine what percentage of

people are actively engaged, engaged, disengaged, or actively
disengaged
• Presenteeism is common in many organizations
• Presenteeism: Notion of being at work while one’s brain is not fully
engaged

Employee engagement has become so popular over the years

because of the engagement-shareholder value chain
• Organizations with higher percentages of engaged and actively
engaged followers should ultimately generate higher shareholder
returns

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 Understanding and Improving Employee Engagement, 3

Obstacles in improving employee engagement

• Some organizations feel obligated to survey employees but not
compelled to improve engagement scores
• Some followers feel entitled and will never be engaged, and some
jobs are almost impossible to make more engaging
• Some organizations erroneously believe perks cause employee
engagement
• This does not make up for long work hours or monotonous work
• Incompetent management
• Some leaders have no idea how followers feel about work
• Others mistreat their followers and do not care whether they are
engaged

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 Understanding Follower Potential, 1
Leaders should:

• Create teams of motivated, engaged, and satisfied followers

• Identify followers with the potential to become future leaders and
prepare them to assume roles with greater responsibility

Most organizations report having serious shortfalls in leadership

talent
• Organizations have tried to solve this problem by hiring outside
people into leadership positions but this has challenges
• Most people are poor judges of talent and do not always make good
hiring decisions
• Hiring people from the outside to fill leadership positions can be
demoralizing for those in the company and cause them to leave

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 Understanding Follower Potential, 2
Best way to tackle the leadership talent shortfall is to identify
and develop followers who have the most potential to be
effective leaders
• Leadership potential: Follower’s capacity to advance one or more
levels within the organization
• Readiness: Evaluation of a follower’s immediate promotability
• Succession planning: Process most organizations use to make
leadership potential and readiness decisions
• Episodic and informal in small companies
• Systematic in large companies
• 9-box matrices or replacement tables are used to evaluate performance
and potential of followers for key positions of leadership

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 Figure 10.3: 9-Box Matrix

Jump to Figure 10.3: 9-Box Matrix, Appendix

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 Summary
• Job satisfaction is the set of attitudes people have about work,
their careers, and their lives
• Employee engagement is concerned with followers’ specific
attitudes about their work, the equipment they use, the
impact of their work, recognition and rewards, and their
immediate supervisors
• Leaders are often asked to provide potential, performance,
and readiness ratings for replacement tables and 9-box
matrices, two formal techniques organizations use in
succession planning

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