Learning Objectives:

 Gaining an overview of job satisfaction

 Evaluating interests, abilities, skills, and values of self/others in relation
to job requirements

Introduction
Employee job satisfaction involves a complex set of personal and situational
variables. Equipped with an understanding of the personality traits, interests,
abilities, skills, and values of employees, managers can design jobs and
practices that enhance performance and maximize job satisfaction.

Job Satisfaction
While the common-sense belief “satisfied employees are more productive than
dissatisfied employees” has not been supported by research findings, what has
been established is some link between job performance and job satisfaction..

Job satisfaction refers to a positive attitude towards our work. Job

satisfaction depends on both internal and external factors such as:
  Mentally challenging work: Whether the work and its regular tasks are
intrinsically motivating. We enjoy jobs that help us use and develop our
skills and abilities. Some task variety and control over how to do tasks is
usually important.

 Expectations: Our expectations for growth, advancement, promotion,

increased competence, and recognition – and whether those are met or
likely to be met.

 Fair compensation: Our pay, compensation, benefits are clear and

equitable in comparison to other people in similar jobs.

 The work environment: Organizational policies, practices, procedures as

well as physical safety and aesthetics.

 Relationships: Whether the people we work with like, respect, and

support us. The quality of our relationships with colleagues, peers,
subordinates and managers – whether we like, respect, trust and want to
be with and like them.

 Job-Personality Fit: A good fit between our personality and our job. Our
genetic predisposition to enjoy our work.

Employee Responses to Job Dissatisfaction

If we are dissatisfied with a job, many people assume we would just quit. In
many ways this is based on Theory X motivation assumptions – that people do
not like work or responsibility. The reason the common sense notion that
satisfaction does not cause productivity does not hold is because working, for
many, is actually an activity that gives meaning to life. People want to work
and produce. Their experience is often that they are not able to do so in the
organizations we have created.

So the research finds that many of us do not quit when we are unhappy with a
job. Leaving the job is just one of four options. Many people express their
dissatisfaction with their jobs through active and constructive attempts to
improve conditions at work. For example, members of unions who are
dissatisfied with their jobs may voice their dissatisfaction through grievance
procedures or through formal contract negotiations. A third response some
others choose is to stay loyal to the organization but in a passive way, waiting
for conditions to improve. And fourth, we have those people who ‘quit and stay’
– they are passive about their dissatisfaction and allow conditions to worsen
while they watch. The last response helps us to understand situations where
job satisfaction is low but employee turnover is also low.

Attaining Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction occurs when we do work we love, in a place we enjoy, with
people with respect – all with financial comfort.

Diagram 1 - The Ideal Job

For most of us, the ideal job is the intersection where:

 Our core tasks overlap our skills-talents-gifts

 The substance of the work excites our interests-passions and creates

alignment with the organizational purpose,

 The work environment and life style we have enable us to live

according to our values-life priorities.

Organizations are coming up with creative ways to increase job satisfaction. At

one organization in California, Autodesk, the employee’s job satisfaction
increased when they could bring their dogs to work. The organization believes
its high job satisfaction rating, loyal and motivated workforce, and low turnover
rates are the result of these kinds of practices.

The challenge for many of us is in identifying the specifics of each of these

factors that are important to us. Even if we find the perfect job and are
satisfied in it, the likelihood that it will stay that way is slim. So we prioritize
these job satisfaction factors and do our best. In the next few sections we will
explore ways to identify and articulate our interests-passions, skills-talents-
gifts, and values-priorities.

Motivating Interests and Passions

Interests are areas of work which attract us naturally. These are the endeavors
to which we bring our greatest passion. The underlying patterns of work
interest are enduring and become more so as we age. Motivating interests are
the number one driver of job satisfaction over the lifetime.
Think of things you love to do. These can be anything from childhood to the
present. Include things you like to do even if you cannot do them well. The
only criterion for this list is that you enjoy doing it. Notice if there are any
themes to the things you like to do. Did you notice that you tend to enjoy
working with things? If so, perhaps you would be interested jobs in
engineering, equipment operation, law enforcement-security, or some skilled
craft. People who like manipulating data often enjoy work in accounting,
finance, administration or records management. Outdoors oriented folks
sometimes like jobs in agriculture, landscape services, animal care, athletics,
recreation, or environmental resource management. Maybe you enjoy working
with ideas in an analytical and would like jobs in the information-medical-
social and hard sciences, or creative expressions through the visual-performing
arts and communications. People who like people are often satisfied doing
service or leadership jobs in beneficiary service, hospitality, education,
counseling, ministry, healthcare, law, politics, management and sales. There
are many ways to combine your motivating interests into themes.

Skills, Talents and Gifts

Skills, talents and gifts are those abilities we do well – usually due to a
combination of innate talent, development, and constant positive reinforcement
in our lifetimes. What is interesting to note is that skills alone are not the
primary indicator of job satisfaction. Doing something you do well does not
necessarily make you happy. Many of us have the experience of doing
something well, perhaps because we were naturally talented or because
someone we respected wanted us to do that skill, but we do not enjoy doing it.
We are not intrinsically interested in that activity. As a result, we do it because
we are rewarded with money, approval, and a sense of competence – and we
remain somewhat discontent because it is not a core passion for us. Be sure to
distinguish those skills you are using because you love using them, from those
skills you are using because you are rewarded for doing them through money
or approval.

Skills are less relevant than interests as a predictor of job satisfaction.

However, both skills and interests together are a wonderful way to target the
job most likely to satisfy you.

Sample Interests, Skills and Abilities

Interests: studying nature __ being outdoors __ rearranging furniture __
decorating things __ collecting things __ listening to music __ traveling __
playing with children __ solving problems __ working with numbers __ charity
work __ auto work/repair __ gardening __ meeting people __ reading spiritual
guides __ building things __ analyzing systems __ studying languages __
engaging in business __ teaching others __ exploring new places __ supervising
people __ public speaking __ using social media tools, etc.

Skills and Abilities:

Honest, Dependable, Confident, Friendly, Shows Initiative, Creative/New Ideas,

Can Work Alone, Organized, Willing to Learn, Administrative Skills, Writing

Skills, Foreign Language, Computer Skills, Art & Design, Telephone Skills,
Works well with others, Encouraging others, Training others, Presentation
Skills, Leading Teams & Individuals, etc.

Designing Your Perfect Job

Your Core Work Skills and Interests are things you enjoy and you do them well.
It is desirable to have the bulk of your job tasks fit into this area. If you are
currently doing a job where most of the tasks are totally aligned with your core
work skills and interests, congratulations. For those of you who are not doing
jobs consistent with your core work skills and interests, perhaps you can seek
projects or assignments in your organization that are a better fit for you.
Sometimes we can redesign our jobs so that there is a better fit. And if the
misalignment is too big to fix within our organizations or through leisure
activities, we make seek employment elsewhere. If you do decide to look
elsewhere be sure to use these skills and interests on your resume. Be
prepared to provide examples of how you demonstrated your motivating skills
in your past endeavors (even if it was through volunteer or leisure activities).

Your High Potential Activities are where you have high interest and low skill
level at this time. Make time and space in your life to develop your skill level.
Your interest provides the passion. Look for opportunities to develop and use
these interests at work – by working with a mentor, or by volunteering your
time for a project that will help you develop here. If you are asked in a
performance review or interview “what areas do you need to develop?” respond
with these high potential activities. Sometimes your organization will pay for
you to develop these interests into work-relevant competencies.

The place of divine discontent is the area where we are skilled at an activity yet
we do not enjoy using that skill – The Supporting Skills quadrant. If your job is
actually in this quadrant, the best thing to do is to look for opportunities to
mentor other people who want to develop these skills and delegate these tasks
away.

In the final quadrant we find our energy drainers. Energy drainers are
activities where you have neither interest nor ability. Most of us have at least a
few job tasks that fall into this quadrant. Of course, you do not want the major
part of your job to be these activities, not if you seek job satisfaction. However,
this is a great opportunity to find partners who enjoy and are good at these
activities. Many activities in organizations now require several people to do
them well. This provides an opportunity to maximize skill and interest
diversity. Your core work skills and interests may be energy drainers for
someone else, and vice versa.

Values, Beliefs, and Life Priorities

The psychologist Milton Rokeach defined values as beliefs that guide action and
judgements across a variety of situations. The research Rokeach and others
performed supports the view that differences in our values explain differences
in our behavior. Values also affect our attitudes, perceptions, needs,
motivation and satisfaction at work. Values are learned from our cultural
setting, our parents, friends, family, peers, media, teachers and role models.
They come from the explanations we tell about the meaning of events in our
lives. Values tend to be deeply and organizationally held beliefs with emotional
charge for us. We use them to justify our feelings. For many of us our values
are just ‘true’ and ‘reality’. Values form the basis of our life priorities.

Types of Values

Researchers have organized values into different categories. Gordon Allport

categorized values as theoretical, economic, aesthetic, social, political, and
religious. Rokeach described terminal and instrumental values. Terminal
values are values that reflect a person’s belief about ‘ends’ to be achieved.
Terminal values include a comfortable life, a sense of accomplishment,
equality, beauty, security, freedom, happiness, love, salvation, respect and
wisdom. Instrumental values—beliefs about the best means for achieving
desired ends—include being loving, open minded, cheerful, courageous,
honest, helpful, independent, obedient or responsible. Implicit in these two
categories is an ethical system about means justifying ends or not.
Values Clarification
Through values clarification we identify values most important to us –
sometimes with a prompt from a list, sometimes through open-ended
questions. It is common to distinguish espoused values – that is values you
say are important but do not act upon – from behavior-guiding values. Values
that meet the following criteria are usually seen to be behavior-guiding values.

1. You can articulate the value.

2. You take pride in the value.

3. You have chosen the value freely from alternatives, after considering the
pros and cons of that value, and you understand the consequences of acting on
that value. To choose the value freely you must have some awareness of what
an alternative value would be. For many values absorbed from our culture and
our parents, we are only able to identify alternative values by encountering
people and situations who have decidedly different values from ours.

4. You can remember a situation where you have acted on that value.

5. You have acted consistently through your lifetime on that value.

Feel free to make a list of your values and ask yourself if you meet the five
criteria. Once you have the values that meet all five criteria, you may wish to
prioritize the remaining values in order of importance to you. When looking for
satisfying work, be sure to consider your values. Your values are what you
must have, not what you should have, in order to have job satisfaction.

Job Enrichment Model

Hackman and Oldham developed a Job Characteristics Enrichment Model that
managers and individuals can use to think about how to redesign jobs to
increase job satisfaction.
Diagram 2: Job characteristics enrichment model

There are individual difference in skills, interests, abilities and motivation.

Step 1 in job enrichment is to identify those individual differences. Step 2 is to
determine what the core job characteristics need to be for a good fit between
the individual and their job. Step 3 is to make sure there is the right skill
variety in the job to take advantage of and develop the individual’s skills and
interests. With this alignment the employee should experience task identity
and task significance thereby experiencing their work as meaningful. Once the
person has been trained in necessary skills and demonstrated competency,
some autonomy is necessary for them to feel responsible for what they
produce. Skills improve with feedback. Feedback is critical to knowing how
well efforts translate into performance. Given meaningful work, knowledge of
and a sense of responsibility for our work output, we are motivated to work, do
a good job, enjoy the work, come every day, and stay in the position.
Assignment and Test Questions

True/False:

1. Mentally challenging work refers to work that is extrinsically motivating.

True False

2. There is a link between job satisfaction and employee productivity.

True False

3. Values are learned in part from our cultural setting.

True False

4. Values are usually at the surface of our personality, so they are easily
changeable.
True False

5. Espoused values are the values that guide the behaviors of the members
of an organization.
True False

6. The core job characteristics in Job Enrichment Model should be

determined according to task requirements rather than a fit between
skills and needs.
True False
7. Rokeach defines terminal values as the best means in achieving the
desired ends.
True False

8. Motivating interests are the things we do well and are rewarded to do.
True False

9. Job satisfaction occurs when we do what we love, in place we love, with

people we love and who value us/our work, all with financial comfort.
True False
10. Whenever job satisfaction decreases, employee turnover increases.
True False

11. Voicing dissatisfaction though contract negotiations is an active,

constructive response.
True False

12. Skills-talents-gifts are things we do well.

True False

13. Skill levels are the most reliable predictor of job satisfaction.
True False

14. Values affect our attitudes, perceptions, needs, motivation and

satisfaction at work
True False

15. Rokeach divided types of values into Terminal and Instrumental.

True False
 16. Values clarification helps you articulate your values.
True False

Multiple-Choice:

1. Which of the following affects the levels of job satisfaction?

a. Fair compensation
b. Relationships
c. Met expectations
d. All of the above

2. Which of the following is a component of an ideal job for most of us?

a. Core tasks align with our skills-talents-gifts and interests.
b. We use skills we are rewarded for using but do not enjoy.
c. The job where we make necessary compromises on core values in
order to deal with financial realities and familial expectations.
d. We do what we like even though it is not important to or valued by
our organization.

3. Which of the following is an active and constructive way to deal with job
dissatisfaction?
a. Quitting
b. Staying loyal to the organization and silently waiting things to
improve
c. Using grievance procedures to voice dissatisfaction
d. Doing the minimum and watching things get worse
 4. In the job enrichment model which of the following must we have in
order to experience our work as meaningful?
a. Skill variety
b. Task identity
c. Task significance
d. All of the above

Matching the Columns:

Please match the following labels with the corresponding definitions regarding
job satisfaction models from this module.

1. Ideal Job A. Low ability, and high interest

2. Core work skills B. High ability, and high interest

3. Energy drainer C. Meaningful work-output responsibility

4. High potential activities D. High ability, and low interest

5. Supporting skills E. Low ability, and low interest

6. Enriched Job F. Intersection of interests, skills, values

Summary
In this module we explored the link between job productivity and satisfaction.
Four constructive and ineffective responses to job dissatisfaction were
described. People are most satisfied when their job allows them to be
competent in work they love. They are often discontent in the long run when
they use skills they are rewarded for externally, but there is little or no intrinsic
enjoyment of the activities. They are dissatisfied and unproductive when they
cannot do the required job tasks well, nor do they enjoy that work. A
wonderful way to help improve job satisfaction is to increase one’s abilities in
areas of intrinsic interest. The job enrichment model provides the basic
strategy for linking task requirements to individual interests, skills, and values
to improve job satisfaction and productivity.

Bibliography

Rokeach, Milton, -Beliefs, attitudes, and values; a theory of organization and

change. (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass), 1968-The nature of human values. (New
York, Free Press) 1973

Oldham, Greg R., -"Job Enrichment," The Concise Blackwell Encyclopedia of

Management, C. Cooper and C. Argyris, eds. (Malden, MA: Blackwell), 1998

Hackman, J. Richard, -“Effects of Changes in Job Characteristics on Work

Attitudes and Behaviors: A Naturally Occurring Quasi-Experiment,”
Organizational Behavior & Human Performance, June 1978, 21(3): 289-304

Allport, Gordon W., -Study of Values. (Houghton Mifflin: Boston), 1960

Glossary
Ideal job: Employee’s core tasks align with his or her skills/talents/gifts;
employee’s interests/passions align with the organizational purpose;
employee’s values/life priorities align with work environment/requirements.

Job satisfaction: Positive attitude toward work; comprised of degree of

challenge, expectations, fair compensation, the work environment, work
relationships, and job-personality fit.

Motivating interests: Interests are the endeavors that attract us naturally.

The underlying patterns of work interest are enduring. Motivating interests are
the number one driver of job satisfaction over the lifetime.

Skills: Skills are those abilities we do well – usually due to a combination of

innate talent, development, and constant positive reinforcement in our
lifetimes. Skills are not the primary driver of job satisfaction, although
motivating interests and skills together are the strongest predictors of job
satisfaction over the lifetime.

Values: Beliefs that guide behavior and judgements, learned from family,
peers, friends, teachers, role models, media, etc., and affecting attitudes,
perceptions, needs, motivation, and satisfaction at work.

Reading and Discussion Questions

1. How might I do more of this career counselling? What does it cost?

2. It’s been so long since I dared to dream of doing something I love, I don’t
remember. I do not know where to start. Any suggestions?

3: I’ve heard about career coaches a lot lately. What do they do?