Many organizations face challenges in accurately measuring job satisfaction, as the definition of satisfaction can differ among various people within an organization.
Despite widespread belief to the contrary, studies have shown that high-performing employees do not feel satisfied with their job simply as a result of high-level titles or increased pay.
This lack of correlation is a significant concern for organizations since studies also reveal that the implementation of positive HR practices results in financial gain for the organizations.
A person’s job is more than just the obvious activities of shuffling papers, writing programming code, waiting on customers, or driving a truck.
Jobs require interaction with co-workers and bosses, following organizational rules and policies, meeting performance standards, living with working conditions that are often less than ideal, and the like.
This means that an employee’s assessment of how satisfied or dissatisfied he or she is with his or her job is a complex summation of several discrete job elements.
9 approaches of measuring job satisfaction of the employees are;
Single Global Rating
The single, global rating method is nothing more than asking individuals to respond to one question such as; all things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?
Summation Score
It identifies key elements in a job and asks for the employee’s feelings about each.
Typical factors that would be included are the nature of the work, supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities, and relation with co-workers.
Besides this, in summation score, many researchers used so many ways of measuring job satisfaction;
Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
In 1969, this was originally developed by Smith, Kendall, and Hulin. 72 items in this index assess five facets of job satisfaction which include: work, pay, promotions, supervision, and coworkers.
Through the combination of ratings of satisfaction with the faces, a composite measure of job satisfaction is determined.
Global Job Satisfaction
In 1979, Warr, Cook, and Wall developed this measure which includes 15 items to determine overall job satisfaction.
Two subscales are used for extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of the job. The extrinsic section has eight items, and the intrinsic has seven items.
Job Satisfaction Relative to Expectations
Bacharach, Bamberger, and Conley developed this measure. It assesses the degree of agreement between the perceived quality of broad aspects of a job and employee expectations.
It is most effective to determine how job stresses, role conflicts, or role ambiguities can hinder an employee from meeting job expectations.
Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire
The long form of this survey is made up of 100 questions based on 20 subscales which measure satisfaction with;
- ability,
- utilization,
- achievement,
- activity,
- advancement,
- authority,
- company policies and practices,
- compensation,
- co-workers,
- creativity,
- independence,
- moral values,
- recognition,
- responsibility,
- security,
- social service,
- social status,
- supervision of human relations,
- supervision-technical variety, and
- working conditions.
Job Satisfaction Survey
This was developed by Spector and contained 36 items based on nine job facets. The job facets include pay, promotion, supervision, benefits, contingent rewards, operating procedures, co-workers, nature of work, and communication.
When it was initially developed, it was specific to job satisfaction in human service, nonprofit, and public organizations.
Job Satisfaction Index
Schriescheim and Tsue developed this measure. It consists of six items that form an index that determines overall job satisfaction. The items are work, supervision, co-workers, pay, promotion opportunities, and the job in general.
Job Diagnostic Survey
Hackman and Oldham developed this survey which measures both overall and specific facets of job satisfaction.
There are three dimensions of overall job satisfaction which include general satisfaction, internal work motivation, and growth satisfaction, which are combined into a single measure.
The facets which are measured on the survey include security, compensation, co-workers, and supervision.
Conclusion
Before measuring the job satisfaction of the employees, managers should get information about the daily contacts and existing data related to the employee.
Managers should have contact with their employees through constant interaction and communication.
Generally, there are many indicators already available in the organization, and their collection in the form of reports indicates the degree of employee satisfaction or dissatisfaction.