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Factors of Employee Satisfaction
JOHN DOE
Liberty University School of Business
BUSI 342 Human Resource Management
Respectfully Submitted to Jane Doe
10/10/2022
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Employee dissatisfaction in corporate America is alive and well. With companies and
corporations understanding that employees are typically their greatest asset, what are the
successful companies doing to keep employees satisfied, and how does employee satisfaction
effect work efforts as well as the employees mental health? In this paper I would like to dive
further into this topic and to do so we must ask what are the main actions or practices that
successful businesses are putting into place to keep their employees satisfied? This article breaks
down the top five contributors to employee satisfaction.
Employees want to feel valued and included. Employers should encourage constant
communication and feedback among employees at all levels of the organization. Workers of all
career levels and generations place high value on compensation- and benefit-related factors when
determining job satisfaction, but nonfinancial factors also weigh heavily in employees’
satisfaction with their careers. At least half of respondents to this survey found a variety of these
factors to be very important, including trust between employees and senior management,
relationship with immediate supervisor, and feeling safe in the work environment. By fostering a
workplace environment that emphasizes communication, respect for others and collaboration
among workers at all levels, HR professionals can expect higher levels of engagement from their
employees. (Lee, 2016, Pg. 9)
We see here from this article that one of the main ways that employees seem to find value in
their position is when they are respected and compensated correctly. Additionally, the article
explains how jobs that offer a bit more variety in terms of keeping employees on their toes and
not having such a boring repetitive work environment.
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Workers may become bored and impatient with repetitive tasks and quickly lose interest
in the purpose of their role. Providing stretch goals and other opportunities can boost employees’
engagement levels. Implementing business practices such as job rotation, job expansion and
enrichment can help employees expand their skills and knowledge and keep their engagement
levels high. These approaches can also be beneficial to employers as employees may gain a
better overall understanding of how the organization operates. More than one-third (35%) of
employees reported that the variety of their work was very important to their job satisfaction.
(pg.34)
Keeping the employees inside of your company happy is crucial to the productivity of
the business, making sure that your employees are treated correctly changes the entire work
environment and allows the employees to want to work harder for the company. This brings me
to the next point that I would like to discuss and that is what factors are causing employee
dissatisfaction. Now that we have discussed what helps employee satisfaction, I think it’s also
important to dive a bit deeper into what makes employees dissatisfied as well as how
dissatisfaction relates to the mental health of the employees.
The workplace environment has a great influence on the health of employees (4).
Significant emerging risks identified in the workplace include psychological hazards (5).
Psychological hazards refer to the interaction of organizational aspects including job content, the
management of the organization and the environmental conditions with employees’ needs, which
affect the physical and psychological health of employees (6,7). Work-related stress is an issue
that has been linked to psychological hazards in the workplace (8). The importance of this topic
can be explained from two perspectives. First, potential negative consequences can occur for
both the organizational productivity and individuals. For instance, experiencing better health and
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well-being in the workplace generates higher organizational productivity, creativity and ultimate
occupational outcomes (9). From an individual perspective, lower stress at the workplace has
been associated with better personal health outcomes (10). The applied research literature has
shown a strong association between aspects of the workplace, stress and job satisfaction (11).
(Aazami et al., 2015)
As shown in this article keeping employees happy within your given workplace is key in
retention of employees as well as resulting in better work environments, when employees are
dissatisfied and bored with their work environment, they can begin to suffer from work related
stress and other phycological damage per the article. “The workplace environment has a great
influence on employees’ health. Job dissatisfaction has been widely recognized as a workplace
stressor that can influence employees’ psychological and physical health statuses.” (Aazami et
al., 2015). I personally am a broker and I work for a firm as a realtor selling real estate in North
Carolina my firm has always celebrated the milestones of the employees as well as giving out
trophies and plaques for employees that are exceeding expectations, this causes a chain reaction
for all of the other brokers that work alongside of me as we all want to be the next broker
recognized. Even small incentives when done correctly can make a huge difference in employee
productivity.
Job satisfaction is described as being key in promoting feelings of fulfillment through
promotions, recognition, salaries, and the achievement of goals (Ausloos and Pekalski,
2007). George and Jones (2008) defined job satisfaction as a collection of feelings that people
have towards their job. Specifically, with respect to health workers, job satisfaction is known to
influence motivation, staff performance, and retention, which in turn affect the successful
implementation of health system reform (Wang et al., 2017). Motivation among workers requires
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an encouraging work environment, which does not happen by chance. (Alrawahi et al., 2020).
From this we can begin to understand that employees seem to inherently work harder with some
sort of motivator. Another motivator for employees to work harder that I noticed in my research
on the topic is job security this article breaks this down in depth and explains the importance of
job security for employees.
Job security improves the performance of work by increasing the concentration of
workers, and providing a healthy and safe working environment could increase labor
productivity and consequently increase business profits [3,4]. Adverse psychological working
conditions give rise to lower mental health of employees. To protect employees' mental health,
those in charge should prevent workplace harassment and achieve social support and work–life
balance [5]. For these reasons, policy makers and employers are required to pay attention to “the
working conditions satisfaction of workers.” (Lee & Park, 2021)
We see here the phycological role that work, and jobs have on individuals’ lives and mental
health. Something as small as knowing that you have job security can change the way that you
work and the effort that you are putting in. Employees in good mental standing usually are
working for companies that respect their needs as well as challenges the employee.
This large-scale meta-analysis of almost 500 studies has provided, for the first time, a
clear indication of the immensely strong relationship between job satisfaction and both mental
and physical health. The correlations identified are numerically large and highly significant (in
both the statistical and clinical sense of the word). The relationships are particularly impressive
for aspects of mental health, specifically burnout, lowered self-esteem, anxiety, and depression,
where it can now be confirmed that dissatisfaction at work can be hazardous to an employee’s
mental health and wellbeing. Importantly, the relationships found were much greater than with
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any other work characteristic evaluated. This has important health implications for the design
and delivery of employee health intervention programs. The results of this study allow us to
conclude that risk assessments of stress in the workplace should attempt to pinpoint those aspects
of work that are causing most dissatisfaction among employees (for example, hours of work,
organizational management style, workload, work control/autonomy, etc) as these are likely to
be also the factors causing raised levels of stress. After meaningful consultation with employees,
work practices should be changed appropriately—and the impact of these measured both in
terms of their effect on stress levels and on job satisfaction. (Faragher et al., 2005)
There are many ways that employees can be negatively affected by their jobs, many workers
especially in the healthcare field have to suffer from physical as well as emotional abuse. As an
employer the people that you employ should be a main priority to you as it is an asset that is
essential to your business. The employees needed to make the business operate and bring in
revenue thus the importance of keeping them happy as well as entertained and challenged in their
positions. A Bible verse that I think of when talking about leadership and how to treat employees
correctly so that they will want to do a good job for the company is Luke 6:31 “Do to others as
you would have them do to you”. As we wrap up this semester and class and go into the places
that we work we can work hard to treat other how we would like to be treated and by doing so I
believe that this would make a big difference on the mental health of employees within
companies. In my personal experience when I have had employers that have the employees’ best
interest at heart, I admittedly have worked harder for that employer than I did when I was busting
tables at a fast food restaurant in my teens. However, I strongly believe that without having the
perspective on a worse situation than you are in that as humans we will always find a reason for
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the grass to be greener. I’m thankful for all of my working experiences however I do appreciate
the employers more that have my best interest at heart at the end of the day.
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References:
Lee, C. (2016, April). EMPLOYEE JOB SATISFACTION AND ENGAGEMENT Revitalizing a
Changing Workforce. SHRM.com. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-
surveys/documents/2016-employee-job-satisfaction-and-engagement-report.pdf
Aazami, S., Shamsuddin, K., Akmal, S., & Azami, G. (2015, August). The relationship between
job satisfaction and psychological/physical health among Malaysian working women. The
Malaysian journal of medical sciences : MJMS. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683848/
Alrawahi, S., Sellgren, S. F., Altouby, S., Alwahaibi, N., & Brommels, M. (2020, September 6).
The application of Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation to job satisfaction in clinical
laboratories in Omani Hospitals. Heliyon. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7486437/
Lee, C., & Park, S. (2021, April 20). Changing factors of employee satisfaction with working
conditions: An analysis of the Korean Working Conditions Survey. Safety and health at
work. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8431283/
Faragher, E. B., Cass, M., & Cooper, C. L. (2005, February 1). The relationship between Job
Satisfaction and Health: A meta-analysis. Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
Retrieved September 12, 2022, from https://oem.bmj.com/content/62/2/105
