The Importance Of Job Satisfaction On Human Resource Management

Job satisfaction has a great impact on human resources management. It has a positive association with job performance (Judge, Bono, Thoresen, & Patton, 2001), productivity (Glaman, Jones, & Rozelle, 1996) and organisational commitment (Achor,

2011; Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979); and negative association with absenteeism

(Basford & Offermann, 2012), employee turnover (Koch & Steers, 1978) and job stress

(Burke, 1970). Job satisfaction is a cognitive and affective evaluation of one’s job, which influences the emotional state of an employee (Brief, 1988). The Job Descriptive Index was developed by Smith, Kendall, and Hulin (1969) to measure workers’ satisfaction based on five facets: co-workers, supervision, promotion opportunities, salary and

The Big Five personality traits model has shown successful results in identifying the relationship between personality and work-related satisfaction (Costa & McCrae, 1992b;

Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002). This model has five dimensions: agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion (Costa &

McCrae, 1992b). Previous studies found that job satisfaction correlates positively with extraversion and negatively with neuroticism. For instance, employees high in neuroticism are less satisfied with their jobs and co-workers; while extroverted employees have better relationships in the workplace and participate more often in social activities with co-workers (Furnham & Zacherl, 1986; Judge et al., 2002).

Moreover, Asendorpf and Wilpers (1998) found that agreeableness and conscientiousness have a strong positive correlation with job satisfaction. For example, employees high in conscientiousness engage more often in activities to help their co-workers (Bowling, 2010).

Personality also has strong implications in job performance. It

This correlation is curvilinear, which means that job performance varies gradually from positive to negative, as conscientiousness increases (Le et al., 2011). Similarly, Colbert, Mount, Harter, Witt, and Barrick (2004) argue that agreeableness correlates with job performance. For instance, they found that employees high in agreeableness show more organisational citizenship behaviours and less counter-productive work behaviours. Jensen and Patel

(2011) found a significant agreeableness-conscientiousness interaction effect on team performance. Employees high in agreeableness and employees high in conscientiousness perform less counter-productive work behaviours when they work together.

These behaviours are influenced by social interaction among co-workers.

Asendorpf and Wilpers (1998) argue that interpersonal relationships are shaped by personality, but not vice-versa. For instance, employees high in extraversion are prone to spend more time with others and trust their co-workers (Diener, Oishi, & Lucas,

2003); and employees high in agreeableness tend to avoid conflicts with their