By | Qualtrics | www.qualtrics.com
What is job satisfaction?
The term job satisfaction, also known as employee satisfaction, is used in organizations to understand the state of an employee’s happiness or unhappiness in their job.
Nadi (1997) defined job satisfaction as composed of the reaction, attitude, or perception of an individual to work.
Managers may ask questions to understand job satisfaction, like:
- How satisfied are you with your job? (with the answer range including these answers: Completely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, completely dissatisfied, no opinion)
- Are you happy with your annual pay? (yes/no)
- Do you find your workplace conditions supportive of your career development? (yes/no)
- Do you have a good work-life balance? (yes/no)
These kinds of questions help determine the level of job satisfaction and if the employee’s job is matching up to their expectations. They give a useful indicative measure of the job satisfaction situation at one moment in time.
This can be useful to know because job satisfaction is a key reason why employees may stay in a company long-term. Satisfied employees are less likely to leave, meaning attrition rates remain low.
This has knock-on effects for the company – with high job satisfaction, companies can keep hold of vital business knowledge, productivity is not interrupted by the need to recruit for replacement employees, and team morale is kept intact.
Yet, job satisfaction as a measure is dependent on many factors, and this isn’t captured by the questions above. A better measurement to consider is employee engagement, which is part of the overall employee experience.
