Job Satisfaction – What’s Up With That?
The press has been lamenting recent dismal numbers on job satisfaction. Early this year, the Conference Board – which regularly pumps out interesting data on employment, the economy and business trends – issued a report that indicates job satisfaction is at its lowest level in two decades. This fact seems stunning in an economy where one in 10 of us is searching for a job – after all, if you have a job, shouldn’t you be satisfied, by definition? Or should you?
A number of red flags stand out in the report:
- Only 45 percent of those surveyed are happy with their jobs.
- Gen Y – the under-25 crowd – is unhappiest in their work.
- Twenty-two percent of the 5,000 surveyed don’t expect to be in their current jobs in a year.
- The drop in satisfaction extends across four ‘drivers of employee engagement’: job design, organizational health, managerial quality and extrinsic rewards.
- The survey results point to a risk that knowledge transfer will be lost.
Job satisfaction and engagement with your employer’s goals are tightly linked. When your employer doesn’t – or can’t – give you meaningful, fulfilling work, your satisfaction with that job will drop. But with one in 10 unemployed and perhaps another seven or ten percent who have given up or are underemployed, looking for another job is a terrifying prospect.
But there are choices you can make, even in this environment. Here are just a few: prepare yourself for a new career, take action to make your job more rewarding, or stay dissatisfied and blame it on external factors.
Gen Y may find it easiest to prepare for a new career. They have less invested, are often fresh out of school and are less likely to be encumbered by mortgages and families. You’d think they had the least to lose, but I would argue they have a lot to lose: their faith in the job market, their trust in their employers, and even their belief that careers are worthwhile. Hey, why not be a waiter or a ski bum when a corporate job looks so unrewarding?
Gen X, struggling with mortgages and families, may feel trapped. And baby boomers, aghast at what the markets and the government have made of their retirement prospects, may feel betrayed on all sides and emotionally unable to invest in their jobs. Yet for Gen X and baby boomers the key to satisfaction is action. But what action?
The TalentCulture ‘action’ prescription is culture. If you’re dissatisfied with work, it’s time to look for workplace culture, personality-culture fit, and a culture of work-life balance.
My colleague Mike Ramer argues that culture is the superglue that bonds people to a mission. A smart employer understands this and creates a workplace culture of purpose, shared goals, engagement, and reward.
A smart employee invests his or her energy in a corporation with a culture of success, teamwork, accountability and excellence.
Satisfaction in a job is a shared responsibility, requiring the employer to create a culture of success and engagement, ensure organizational health, demand the best from its managers, and provide extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to committed employees. Career seekers: your responsibilities are to understand what drives you, seek the right culture fit with an employer, and continually invest in skills. Create a balance in the work/life equation by exploring personal interests and maintaining physical and emotional wellness.
Job satisfaction is a shared responsibility, especially in difficult times. We think that with the right mix of attitude, culture and collaboration it’s possible to be satisfied with a job, even to renew satisfaction in a stale job. What do you think?
I couldn’t agree more — action is the key to creating or finding job satisfaction for an employee, yet the employer has a responsibility to create the workplace culture. Job seekers would do well to follow your advice of “understanding what drives them, seeking the right culture fit with an employer, continually investing in their skills, and creating a work/life balance.”
Excellent post, Meghan.
“Job satisfaction is a shared responsibility, especially in difficult times.”
Or in any time.
You nailed it in this post, Meghan. As an employer in various industries I’ve seen time and again too many employees who have an entitlement mindset and make their managers, co-workers and themselves miserable because nothing is done for them to change their situation. They’re cocooned in self-perpetuated stagnation and do nothing to make a difference in their circumstance.
And as an employer in various industries we also perpetuated that misfortune.
Employer and employee can renew satisfaction. If not, then employee has to brave the terrifying prospect of making a difference in their professional and personal life — because they are more one in the same than they’ve ever been.
Shared responsibility to improve the satisfaction is where it’s at today. Right on.
Great post – builds meaningfully on a post I’d read from Sybil Stershic, the internal communications & employee engagement advocate over at Quality Service Marketing, in that it examines job satisfaction from the perspective of those surveyed (the likely dissatisfied) rather than the companies struggling to deal with (or not) the disengagement of their workforces.
(http://qualityservicemarketing.blogs.com/quality_service_marketing/2010/02/whatever-happened-to-job-satisfaction.html)
My question comes from the perspective of the prospective employee looking for the proper “culture fit”. How does a person really know whether there will be a personality-culture fit between themselves and their prospective employer? Every employer will ascribe to their company a “culture of success and engagement, organizational health, demand the best from its managers, and provide extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to committed employees”.
How does an individual sort out the reality from the rhetoric?
Through the interview process? Independent research? By asking for and following up on customer references? By monitoring social media? An internship-style trial evaluation for the company?
I agree completely that the key to successful two-way value exchange between employer and employee is the establishment of culture-perosonality fit and the development of expectations of what the future exchange of value between them will look like. That said, it seems a daunting task for anyone embarking on this type of search to evaluate and choose successfully.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
AJ, Thank you for visiting the new TalentCulture blog! We appreciate you stopping by. I often speak to individuals and groups about the importance of self-assessment > http://bit.ly/wVe7O This is truly a key factor in bridging the culture gaps I (unfortunately) see so often. Employees that take responsibility for their own happiness and self understanding *first* may just find the road to career fulfillment a more rewarding one. Simply Stated – It’s Work!
Kevin, Great insight. Appreciate your valuable thoughts! Agree, shared responsibility is a trend I/we can stand behind. It creates a healthier and more productive workplace for all parties.
Chris, It’s nice to see you here. Very welcome. I hear you. You bring up great questions. The short answer = all of the above. As a career seeker, you must do the homework and take a varied approach to researching potential employers. The goal when TalentCulture partners with clients is to create a more transparent hiring process for career seekers. Culture branding works best when employers, hiring managers, or recruiters create a more realistic notion of what it’s really like to work in their setting = The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. This is where strategic partnership comes into play. It’s about creating trust for all parties involved first and working from there on a thoughtful hiring and branding process. Certainly no corporate culture is a perfect one. Often times, I see employee retention issues when overselling occurs in the recruiting and onboarding process. It’s about authenticity and discovering a more organic culture brand for organizations. I will continue to unfold ideas regarding this topic.
Meghan, Excellent post!
You tackle a topic which is at the heart and soul of all things work related – satisfaction. The Rolling Stones sing it best: “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
From what you write and the conference board’s report, it’s not suprising that “job satisfaction is at its lowest level in two decades” across demographic spectrums. With an unemployment rate hovering close to 10%, those who are working should be happy, but many are not. Perhaps, because they feel trapped?
It’s interesting that the Gen Y crowd is unhappiest, though this may come from youth trying to figure out their path in life. (I’ve read surveys that people in their 40s and beyond are generally happier overall across “life” variables, perhaps, because they’ve “discovered” themselves and where they fit.)
Thanks for quoting my recent TC post in which I state, “Culture is the super glue that bonds people to a mission.” Indeed, if a person’s values align to a group, organization or cause, then it “feels” right and there’s “fit.” An employee will be more productive, happy – and satisfied.
I agree with your summary, “Job satisfaction is a shared responsibility.” Employees, Management, Companies.
Developing the right organizational culture is key to retention in the workplace. Imagine when this job market improves, the massive job movement there will be. I read recently that of the approx 60 million people on LinkedIn, a whopping 28% are seeking a career move. And close to 70% are open to listening to new career opportunities. At the heart is job satisfaction.
Best, Mike
As always, thoughtful comments Mike. Appreciate your valuable input!
The Gen Y statistics were a surprise at first glance on my end as well. As I delved deeper there is no doubt it relates (at least in part) to these recessionary times. A sense of the “unknown” has prevailed for this demographic (many are fresh college graduates), and certainly further fueled by the media. Times are indeed changing – hiring has really picked up the last few quarters. Great news.
We will continue to explore the importance of culture fit – as it relates to the workplace and social community building.