A Survey of Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction among Employees

The issue of job satisfaction among the employees is of great importance. To determine the behaviour of an organisation it is important to understand the satisfaction level of its employees. There is a lot of time and effort has been devoted by the organisation to determine the satisfaction level of its employees because it reduces the rate of absenteeism and turnover. Different scholars and researchers have defined job satisfaction in different ways. One of the most widely accepted definition in organisational research is that of Locke (1976), who defines job satisfaction as ―a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one‘s job or job experiences‖. A more recent definition of the concept of job satisfaction is from Hulin and Judge (2003), who have noted that job satisfaction includes multidimensional psychological cognitive (evaluative),affective (or emotional), and behavioural components. Better human resource management practice plays an important role in increasing the satisfaction level of the employees. There is a positive correlation between the human resource management practices and the job satisfaction. It is the responsibility of managers at all the levels to look after the well-being of their staff to create conducive and harmonious environment for every role player of the organisation. Gordon et al., (1999), states that job satisfaction occurs when a job meets the expectations of an individual. The job satisfaction is a special tool to understand the attitudes, feelings, and belief of employees towards their job. An organisation makes use of various resources to compete in a dynamic environment. But the success and failure of an organisation depends on their ability to make best use of their human resource. Davis et al., (1999) defines job satisfaction as an experience which has various aspects relevant to working conditions and the nature of work. Garrido et al., (2005) conducted the research to discover the various factors which determine the job satisfaction of sales managers.

The two factor theory developed by psychologist Frederick Herzberg gained a lot of popularity in the world of human resource management practices. Frederick and his associates conducted an interview of 200 engineers and accountant in the Pittsburgh area of the United States. The analysis of that interview revealed that there are certain set of factors in the workplace causes job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors causes dissatisfaction. According to Herzberg maintenance factors are necessary to maintain a reasonable level of satisfaction among the employees. These factors are Company policies and administration, technical supervision, inter-personal relationship with peers, interpersonal relationship with supervisors, interpersonal relationship with subordinates, salary, job security, personal life, working conditions and status. After analysing the theory one striking conclusion has been derived that no organisation can achieve higher performance simply by increasing the

understanding of human behaviour.

a. The theory is tested on a small sample of 200 engineers and accountant only and they are not considered as a representative of the work force in general. b. The theory is not universally applicable as manual workers are not considered for the analysis. c. The theory focuses too much on satisfaction than the performance level. It is difficult to establish a direct link between the satisfaction and the performance level. d. The analysis of the theory is derived from the interview method which suffers from various biases. Therefore, the empirical validity of the theory is doubtful. e. It is difficult to draw a line of distinction between the maintenance factors and the motivating factor. What is maintenance factor for a worker in the developed country like USA may be a motivating factor in a developing country like India.

The Job Characteristic theory was developed by Greg R. Oldham and J. Richard Hackman. It is a theory which focuses on work design. The concept of work design is concerned with alteration of jobs to increase both the quality of work life and productivity of employees. They defined five core job characteristics which affect five work related outcomes.

In an organisation many employees feel dissatisfied because of lack of variety and creativity in their work. If the first three characteristics of the model are included

The most famous job satisfaction model is developed by Edwin A. Locke‘s in 1976. According to his theory, the best way to determine the satisfaction of employees is to find out the discrepancy between what one wants in a job and what one is getting in a job. He further defined job satisfaction as ―a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one‘s job or job experiences‖. To illustrate, if there is an employee who gets more satisfied to work in an autonomous environment than the other employees. In such a situation he should be assigned work in that area where he gets more autonomy. The organisation should try to understand the factors which give more satisfaction to the employees.

a. To identify the factors affecting the satisfaction of the employees working in different organisations. b. To examine the impact of factors affecting the satisfaction of the employees.

To understand the relationship between human resource management practices and its impact on job satisfaction various theories and research articles are reviewed. Some of the research articles are discussed below:

Shah (2007) conducted a study to examine the Organizational Culture theory and practices with emphasis on the effectiveness of satisfaction. The employees of R & D organisation Integrated Services were asked through questionnaire about the culture they perceive prefer and job satisfaction at their workplace. The results suggest that organisational culture should be improved further and made conducive for higher level of job satisfaction. George (2012) examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. The data was collected from 208 respondents of an international electronic firm operating in India using Self

using statistical tools such as Karl Pearson coefficient of correlation, ANOVA, t-test and so on. The study reveals that there is a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction.

A questionnaire was developed for employees after analysing the previous researches in the relevant area. A pilot survey was conducted and changes were made in the questionnaire on the basis of the responses given by the employees. The questionnaire was self-developed and distributed among the 300 employees working in different organisation in Delhi and NCR on the basis of convenience sampling.

A questionnaire titled ―Factors affecting job satisfaction‖ was used to collect the data for our study. The questionnaire was divided into two sections. Section-―A‖ describes the socio-demographic characteristics of the employees and Section-―B‖ describes the four factors i.e. recognition, advancement, opportunity for growth and responsibility which affect the job satisfaction among the employees and comprises of 20 statements. Out of 20 statements 5 pertains to each factor under study. The questionnaire was designed on the basis of Likert scale ranking (5-Point Likert scale) and analysed through SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science Programme). An Independent Sample T- Test was applied for analysis of factors affecting the job satisfaction. The descriptive statistics was used to analyse the socio demographic characteristics of the employees.

The empirical study was undertaken to examine the factors affecting the job satisfaction among the employees working in different organisation in Delhi and NCR. The data was collected from 300 respondents based on convenient sampling. The data collected from the survey through questionnaire was analysed using the SPSS (22.0) package. 1.6.1 Characteristics of respondents Table 1 depicts the socio demographic detail of the employees working in different organisations. The employees are characterised on the basis of gender, age, qualification, occupation and annual income. The male respondents were 76.4% in our study which shows that the proportions of working males are more than the female in our society. Our data depicts that people of all age groups work in the society. Majority 44.2% of the employees were employed in government sector. Nearly 48.8% of the employees earn 4-6 lacs annual income.

Source: Field survey results

We used Cronbach‘s alpha to assess the reliability of the 20 items, which have been categorized under 4 heads i.e. recognition, advancement, opportunity for growth and responsibility. The Cronbach‘s alpha is considered as the most widely used index for determining internal consistency. This test was conducted by us to ensure that the statements are reliable for further statistical analysis. As a general rule, a coefficient greater than or equal to 0.5 is considered acceptable and a good indication of construct reliability. The Cronbach‘s alpha for all the 20 attributes is 0.875.

We applied one sample t-test on all the statements constituting 4 heads i.e. recognition, advancement, opportunity for growth and responsibility to analyze if the mean response significantly varies from neutral response. The two hypotheses are framed for one sample t-test is as follows:

Ho:µ≠3 (―the sample mean is not equal to the midpoint in a 5 likert scale‖)

Where µ= Proposed constant for the population mean = Sample mean N= Sample size S= Sample Standard Deviation

Source: Field Survey results Table 2. Depicts the result of One Sample t-test for all the factors affecting the job satisfaction. Since p<0.05 for recognition, advancement and opportunity for growth, therefore we reject the null hypothesis that the sample mean is equal to the midpoint on a 5 point likert scale and conclude that sample mean is significantly different from the midpoint value. On the other hand, p >0.05 for responsibility, we accept the null hypothesis that the sample mean is equal to the midpoint value. It is important to mention that employees resist responsibility and it adversely affect the job satisfaction among the employees. When we compared the mean differences among the factors affecting the job satisfaction among the employees, we found that mean difference is positive and significant for recognition, advancement and opportunity for growth. Among the following it was highest for opportunity for growth, followed by recognition and advancement. On the other hand, the mean difference is negative and insignificant for responsibility. i.e. recognition, advancement, opportunity for growth and responsibility on the satisfaction of employees working in different organisations in Delhi and NCR. The data was collected through questionnaire from 300 employees working in different type of organisation. The data was analysed using one sample t-test on the variables constituting 20 statements. The Cronbach alpha was .875 for 20 statements included in our analysis. The Cronbach alpha score above 0.5 fulfil the reliability criteria. The results on the basis of one sample test clearly show that advancement for growth gives maximum satisfaction to the employees. Every employee demands for growth in an organisation irrespective of his current status and position in an organisation. Recognition of work is the second most important factor affecting the satisfaction. It is the human nature to demand proper recognition of work in an organisation. The employees get least satisfaction through advancement. We also found that no employee seek responsibility in an organisation. Employees avoid seeking responsibility and their job satisfaction gets adversely affected by responsibility.

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