High Levels of Job Satisfaction to Increase Performance Levels

“If you want your employees to increase their level of performance, you must create high levels of job satisfaction.” Discuss.

Intensive research has been conducted over getting the most of the employee in order to maximize profitability and performance. The most notable of these researchers being Elton Mayo, Frederick Winslow Taylor and Abraham Maslow, Job satisfaction has been credited as being a heavy influence on performance. According to Colquit, ‘Job satisfaction is one of several individual mechanisms that directly affects job performance and organizational commitment.’ This view has been challenged and agreed with to such an extent that most researchers have begun to assume that we know all there is to know about the topic and its importance has diminished (Roznowski and Hulin, 1992). Other sociologists significant to this topic include Timothy A. Judge, Carl J. Thoresen, Joyce E. Bono and Gregory K. Patton (The Job Satisfaction-Job Performance Relationship: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review). In these works, it is argued that job satisfaction is actually the result of high performance rather than the cause.

Although job satisfaction may play an important role in an employee’s performance, it is not a compulsory component of that employee’s level of output. In fact, it can be said that job satisfaction is the result of high levels of performance! It is, however, a term that is highly recognized in relation to the emotions, behavior and beliefs of an employee. “Like expectancy theorists, Locke (1970) viewed satisfaction as resulting from performance, but in this case satisfaction was viewed as a function of goal-directed behavior and level-attainment.” (Judge, Thoresen Bono and Patton 2001). This points to the idea tha...

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...although job satisfaction is an important part of an employee’s performance. However, it is still a component of performance and not necessarily a cause for increased levels of performance. It’s overlooked significance notwithstanding, it is not a must when dealing with an employee’s efficiency within the organization. The challenge for the organization is to fuel the employee’s motivation to work more efficiently and effectively, the satisfaction will spawn from the employees in due course.

References:

Judge, TA, Thoresen, CJ, Bono, JE, Patton, GK. (2001). Pyscholical Bulletin. The Job Satisfaction-Job Performance Relationship: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review. 127 (3), 376-407.

(2013). Job Satisfaction. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction. Last accessed 30 January 2013.

Argyle, M. (1987), The Psychology of Happiness. London: Methuen