Work satisfaction of the employees is an essential part of any business’s success, or if the employees are not satisfied, it’s agonizing failure. Different aspects of employment can be satisfactory to different people: some prefer to socialize with their coworkers and don’t mind dull busywork, while others want to change the world and be left alone in the process. Often, making work satisfactory for employees is a very personal endeavor for managers and executives. Still, they can just as well reject the notion and manage the company like a sweatshop. My own experience and work satisfaction, measured by three specialized questionnaires, can help shed light on this crucial point on a more personal level.
According to the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, my organizational commitment is average across the board. My affective commitment score is 12, my continuance commitment score is 15, and my normative commitment score is 11. Ideally, affective commitment should be higher, because it means that I like my job for what it is. The other two types are less favorable and stem from having nowhere else to go or having some misplaced anxiety. While I cannot complain about my job, and it is genuinely satisfactory at the moment, as a further test result will show, some things could be improved. For example, Afshari and Gibson (2016) suggest that transactional leadership may improve the employees’ affective commitment by using conditional rewards. As I enjoy doing my job for what it is, and as my enjoyment can be considered short-term, making my everyday work a challenge of how much I can exceed expectations and how large a reward I can expect from it can make things more exciting. I do not want my boss to change my life; I just want to be recognized for growth and achievement.
The results of the Job Descriptive Index are rather high for me. I am the least satisfied with my coworkers, scoring at 34, but not because they are bad people; I simply do not know them and do not care that much. The thing I am satisfied with the most is the actual work I do, scored at 48, and it reflects my interest in the short-term day-to-day performance. My pay is decent, and not at all below average, but I would like to be paid more for my competence and engagement. I believe that offering more short-term performance-based rewards could increase my engagement and satisfaction, as well as alleviate some financial worries from my life. I am satisfied with the rest of the facets from the Index and do not see many areas for improvement there.
The Work Design Questionnaire measured how satisfied I was with the way my workplace is managed and how I approach and feel about the work I do. According to the test, I am the most satisfied with task identity, scored at 16, with significance a close second at 15. I am the least satisfied with task variety, scoring at 11. Overall, my workplace is well-managed, and I am treated like a person, so I cannot really suggest many ways to improve my intrinsic motivation in that regard. However, I have found the gamification of work-related tasks to be an interesting option to make work more exciting and even better managed (Liu, Huang, & Zhang, 2017). A digital solution that would treat aspects of work as a game could make me more excited about accomplishing short-term goals, and it would deliver clear feedback on my performance that managers sometimes cannot do.
Overall, there are many ways to increase employee satisfaction and many reasons to do so. The old-fashioned performance-driven monetary rewards could work for a workplace that is already satisfactory but can become a nightmare otherwise. A somewhat conventional improvement is to provide employees with more distinct tasks that they can be proud of accomplishing. However, one could also turn a job into a game, which could also achieve similar goals with additional whimsy as a bonus.
References
Afshari, L., & Gibson, P. (2016). How to increase organizational commitment through transactional leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37(4), 507–519.
Liu, M., Huang, Y., & Zhang, D. (2017). Gamification’s impact on manufacturing: Enhancing job motivation, satisfaction and operational performance with smartphone-based gamified job design. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries, 28(1), 38–51.