The Influential Factors of Work Satisfaction

Working in an organization means working in a group with other coworkers and leaders. Both the leaders and coworkers and some other factors influence employee’s satisfaction for the work. Therefore, I divide the work satisfaction into three parts: satisfaction with the job, satisfaction with leadership and satisfaction with coworkers. In each part, influential factors and examples are given.

Satisfaction with the job

Employees get a kind of accomplishment and pleasure from the work itself, and the level of satisfaction relates greatly to the fulfillment of needs and desire that the job offers. The job satisfaction can be valued through three factors in everyday work activities, which are compensation, opportunity and work condition.

The first factor is the compensation, which is constitute by the direct compensation of wage, salary and training course and the indirect part of personal expectation and competence got from the job. Another factor is the opportunity, with promotion, challenge and career development concluded. An additional factor concerns the work condition, which means the environment of the workplace and the methods applied in the work.

One of my classmates signed a contract after her graduation from university, promising to work in Algeria for three years. She tells me that life in Africa is not as what we thought, people there are very kind, fruits are fertile and her company provides quite good apartment and canteen for them. For the salary, she gets about one hundred thousand per year, which is much better than most of newly graduated students. She says that Africa is a good place for newly graduate students because there are quite good opportunities and challenges for them.

In this example, my classmate traits the opportunity as the most important factor for the job satisfaction, she has a clear plan for the career development in Africa, and the job there promote to reach her goal. The work condition and the salary are under her expectation, so she is quite satisfied with her job.

Satisfaction with leadership

Employees wish to be well managed and led effectively, which call for good leaders. According to Northouse, G. (2007), Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Good leadership skills can enhance employees’ satisfaction. From my perspective, there are two factors help to promote the satisfaction: fairness and efficiency.

For the fairness factor, employees are more satisfied when they feel they are fairly treated for their work. Besides, when leaders lead their employees to do the right thing, with efficient methods, the goal will be accomplish in a more efficient way, which will make the employees more satisfied.

Another example comes from a woman who has worked in the government for several months, she find that efficiency in the government is not high. Her work is to deal with problems from citizens. However, before we get problems solved, she should give her solutions to the leaders to get the approval. There are three leaders to examine the solutions, and it takes time.

Satisfaction with coworkers

“Coworker relationships are the glue that holds an organization together.”(O’Hair, Friedrich, & Dixon, 2005, P186) Positive and constructive coworker relationships make work an easy and comfortable place to be. In order to get more satisfactions with coworkers, we should consider the following factors: team building, conflict management, difficult coworkers and personality differences.

I have worked in a newly built one, there is still much to be perfected and we have no leader yet in the team, so when we confront problems, we discuss to find solutions. As our age and educational background are about the same, we are easier to deal with personality differences and manage the conflicts.

Conclusion

This paper gives a brief introduction of the three parts of work satisfaction and their influential factors. If the employees are well promoted by these factors, they will get more satisfied and work more efficient to achieve the goal.

References

Northouse, G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice (3rd ed.). Sage Publications, Inc.

Rowe, W. G. (2007). Cases in Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Kouzes, James M. & Posner, Barry Z. (1987). The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.