Abstract
There are many factors that impact the productivity of employees’ work and the organization’s ability to reach its goals. One of them is job satisfaction, which measures the contentment that one feels towards the work they do. Key findings suggest that increasing satisfaction rates can contribute to retention in the healthcare industry and will help save on recruiting expenditures. This literature review found that job satisfaction is a multidimensional issue, impacted by an individual’s characteristics and the organization’s environment.
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is widely discussed among scholars; thus, there is a wide range of literature covering the aspects and factors influencing job satisfaction. Some examples are gender, ethnicity, working environment, or life events. The paper provides a review of ten sources regarding job satisfaction presented in chronological order. The research space that this paper focuses on is job satisfaction, factors that impact it, and the effect of employee satisfaction with their job on retention and the organization’s success.
Impact of Job Satisfaction
It is important for organizations to create environments that positively contribute to the performance and motivation of their employees. Job satisfaction is defined as an attitude and feeling of contentment that one has when performing his or her duties. Employee performance is significant for a company’s efficiency, and consequently, this is the main reason to survey job satisfaction and its influence on the working process (Darma, 2019). It is an important concept because job satisfaction can be positively impacted by the management, which can contribute to better performance and less turnover of the staff.
Job satisfaction differs from similar topics, for example, motivation, because it incorporates both individual and organization-specific factors and reflects how people feel about their work. Hence, it can indicate significant problems that have an adverse effect on individuals, for example, bureaucracy, and addressing them, which is the main antecedent and consequence of this concept (Harper et al., 2015).
This literature review suggests that Factors that can strengthen job satisfaction are either personal, such as stress, the conflict between work and life, or organization, including environment, management, and support. Understanding this leads to an ability to improve the internal environment of a company.
Retention and turnover are interconnected with job satisfaction since there is a hypothesis that the individual’s attitudes towards their employer and working environment can affect their decision to leave. However, Dwiyanti et al. (2019) did not find a significant correlation between retention rates and worker satisfaction. Moreover, social support and psychological contracts do not affect the two ratios, as well.
Organization’s Environment
Companies can change their internal culture and approach to managing employees to enhance the latter’s satisfaction with work. The working environment’s characteristics correlated with employees’ levels of satisfaction (Raziq & Maulabakhsh, 2015). In some industries, recruitment is especially challenging, and employee retention becomes an important metric of success.
In their survey of healthcare workers, Harper et al. (2015) found that the main barriers are bureaucracy and lower salaries in the public sector. Positive factors are supervision, size of an organization, organization’s support, and tenure. Employees with flexible work show a more stable attitude towards interpersonal justice and report higher satisfaction rates, although Wilczynska et al. (2017) researched only knowledge workers. Therefore, the question of improving the morale of the permanent workers remains unsolved.
An organization’s management has a direct impact on job satisfaction rates. A manager’s approach to work can have a significant impact on this ratio, mainly the managerial style he or she is adopting (Tepret & Tuna, 2015). This suggests that executives can change their leadership style based on the requirements of a specific environment to enhance satisfaction among workers. Additionally, employees that have an ability to displace self-leadership report higher levels of job satisfaction (Darma, 2019). Moreover, good leaders are usually people who are satisfied with their position, and it is beneficial for companies to encourage people to showcase leadership.
Individual’s Characteristics
The examined research identifies a number of individual-specific factors that impact employees’ job satisfaction rates. For example, apart from the organizational environment, a person’s life events and stress can negatively affect job satisfaction (Singh et al., 2015). Gender differences and specific perceptions associated with them affect job satisfaction. Baral (2016) explores the question of women’s satisfaction with their jobs and suggests that a work-family conflict exists within this population, which can contribute to a negative perception of one’s work.
Additionally, in their research dedicated to exploring the connection between gender, race, and job satisfaction, Hersch and Xiao (2016) focus on an important question – achieving equal levels of job satisfaction across different populations. The results of their study suggest that gender, ethnicity, and race, as well as job insecurity, have a great impact on the differences in one’s job perception. Notably, despite the work-life conflict that is common for women, they report higher levels of job satisfaction when compared to men (Zou, 2015). However, gender inequality in the labor market can contribute to increasing dissatisfaction among some populations
Future Research
Future research on the topic can explore other factors, apart from the organization’s characteristics, gender, ethnicity, or effect of stress that are meaningful in the context of job satisfaction. Moreover, it is notable that different fields of work or industries can have varying sets of factors affecting job satisfaction levels, which should also be researched. Only a few studies focus on some of the core characteristics of an individual – their gender and ethnicity, and future research can explore the issue of women-work conflict in greater detail to determine how the problem can be addressed by employers. The concept of self-leadership is original, as it deals with the dependence of self-leadership, job performance, and satisfaction, and it requires more research.
The theoretical limitations of these studies are the difference in survey methods and factors that the researchers explore. For example, in the article by D+, then significant limitations are job satisfaction, social support, psychological contrast, turnover, and their correlation. Also, although some studies point out important factors, they lack an explanation of how these can be addressed in an organization’s environment. For example, Darma (2019) states that leadership enhances job satisfaction; thus, employees content with their careers are good leaders. However, there is a question of how the problems of lacking initiative among employees may be solved.
Conclusion
Generally, this review provides information about researches on job satisfaction, covers the main aspects as the relevance of the topics, central concepts, reasons, and conceptual outcomes. Papers cover different aspects of job satisfaction, influencing, and dependant factors. The concept outcome relates to a better understanding of working and individual demands of different populations, and hence the quality of job satisfaction may be enhanced by organizations to achieve better performance.
References
- Baral, R. (2016). Women managers & professionals: Work-family conflict & job satisfaction. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 51(3), 432-446. Web.
- Darma, N., A., S. (2019). Job satisfaction moderate in self-leadership on job performance. International Research Journal of Management, IT & Social Sciences, 6(6), 270-277.
- Hersch, J., & Xiao, J. (2016). Sex, Race, and Job Satisfaction Among Highly Educated Workers. Southern Economic Journal, 83(1), 1-24. Web.
- Dwiyanti, R., Hamzah, H., B., & Abas, N., B. (2019). Job satisfaction, psychological contracts, and turnover intention: Role of social support as a mediator. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science, 8(6), 96-104. Web.
- Harper, E., Castrucci, B., C., Bharthapudi, K., & Sellers, K. (2015). Job Satisfaction: a critical, understudied facet of workforce development in public health. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 21, 46-55. Web.
- Raziq, A., Maulabakhsh, R. (2015). Impact of working environment on job satisfaction. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 717-725. Web.
- Singh, A., Amish, A., & Singhi, N. (2015). Role of life events stress & individualism-collectivism in predicting job satisfaction. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 51(2), 300-311. Web.
- Tepret, N., Y., Tuna, K. (2015). Effect of management factor on employee job satisfaction: An application in telecommunication sector. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, 673-679. Web.
- Wilczynska, A., Batorski, d., & Torrent-Sellens, J. (2017). Job satisfaction of knowledge workers. The role of interpersonal justice and flexible employment. Polish Sociological Review, 3(199), 329-349. Web.
- Zou, M. (2015). Gender, work orientations and job satisfaction. Work, Employment & Society, 29(1), 3-22. Web.