Job satisfaction is associated with a increasing employee loyalty and a boost to its productivity. Every company tries to devise different strategies to ensure this, seeking a more cohesive, committed and high-performing workforce. However, the focus of such plans is not always the right one.
One of the most common mistakes is to confuse job satisfaction with happiness at work. They are not the same thing. Job satisfaction is an attitude, It must therefore contain both cognitive and affective components (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). However, there has been a history of misalignment between the definition of this construct and its measurement. Thus, when measuring satisfaction in a company, the first step to be able to design a strategy that works, indicators are used that ignore its effects, with the cognitive component as the predominant approach.
In order to collect job satisfaction metrics in the company, instruments such as the following are used:
Both ask for descriptions and evaluations of work characteristics, rather than focusing on feelings or emotional experiences that take place during work or within the work environment.
The result is that the degree of employee job satisfaction, and the factors that influence it, is not well understood.
On the other hand, happiness is not a term that has been widely used in academic research on employees' experiences in organisations. This is not because of a lack of interest in this aspect, but rather because of the conceptual confusion stemming from considerable overlap with the concept of job satisfaction.
Happiness or positive affective experiences in the workplace are related to:
In addition, it should be borne in mind that, apart from individual differences between people, issues related to happiness vary depending on the ways of working.
Happiness at work reflects hedonic experiences or positive beliefs about an object (e.g. job satisfaction, job satisfaction)., (e.g., affective engagement, experience of positive emotions while working), issues related to learning/development, growth, autonomy and self-realisation.
Finally, it is important to note that, although job satisfaction is often directly related to management and their decisions, employee happiness depends more on co-workers. In fact, data from a study recently published by JKSTalent show that:
As mentioned above, flexibility and autonomy lead to happiness at work. But the benefits of equipping the workforce with these two attributes go beyond that, as they form the basis for the development of job satisfaction.
Autonomy can be guaranteed in many different ways, However, among the most effective are the following:
Flexibility is not just a question of the length of working time or its distribution; there are other ways of ensuring it, such as the flexible remuneration.
All these steps help the company to moving towards a model in which employee job satisfaction is on the rise, However, it should not be forgotten that, ultimately, being satisfied with one's position in the organisation and the tasks assigned to it will depend on the individual. As it is a question of attitude, happier people will find more satisfaction with their work, as shown by the Nathan Bowling's research which confirms that if people are, or are predisposed to be, happy and satisfied in life in general, then they are likely to be happy and satisfied in their work.
