Personal Variables

For some people, it appears most jobs will be dissatisfying, irrespective of the organizational conditions involved, whereas for others, most jobs will be satisfying. Personal variables like age, educational level, sex, etc., are responsible for this difference.

(1) Age : Most of the evidence on the relation between age and job satisfaction, holding such factors as occupational level constant, seems to indicate that there is generally a positive relationship between the two variables up to the preretirement years and then there is a sharp decrease in satisfaction. An individual aspires for better and more prestigious jobs in later years of his life. Finding his channels for advancement blocked, his satisfaction declines.

(2) Educational level : With occupational level held constant there is a negative relationship between the educational level and job satisfaction. The higher the education, the higher the reference group which the individual looks to for guidance to evaluate his job rewards.

(3) Sex : There is as yet no consistent evidence as to whether women are more satisfied with their jobs than men, holding such factors as job and occupational level constant. One might predict this to be the case, considering the generally lower occupational aspiration of women.

Many other correlates of job satisfaction have been found by several other studies. Thus, Stagner, Flebbe and Wood in their study of 715 male unionized rail-road workers done in 1952 have found general working conditions, union management relations, general quality of supervision and grievance handling procedure as correlates of job satisfaction. Gadel in his study of 301 female typists and clerks, done in 1953, found ease of commuting to work co-workers, working hours and company prestige as correlates. Ross and Zander in their study of skilled women workers in a large company, done in 1957, found recognition autonomy, doing important work and fair evaluation of work done, as important correlates. Durganand Sinha in his study of office and manual workers done in 1958 has found job status, type of work, supervisory behaviour and work group as correlates.

Job satisfaction tends to correlate with a number of other variables in the organization. Relations with some variables are given below :

Fig. 16.2: Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Productivity

Job-satisfaction and Turnover : Job-satisfaction consistently correlates with turnover. It might have been seen that employees having low job-satisfaction leave their employer as early as possible. So, low job satisfaction increases the turnover and high job satisfaction decreases it. Thus it has a negative correlation with labour turnover.

Job-satisfaction and Absenteeism : Absenteeism has the same relationship with the job satisfaction as has the turnover. Both are negatively correlated. Employees who have low job satisfaction tend to remain absent off and on from their job.

Job-satisfaction and Community Condition : Job-satisfaction is influenced by community conditions. It is generally advocated that poor community conditions pull down job satisfaction and better community conditions push it up. But this is not always true. What usually happens is that employees compare their community conditions with their job conditions. If job conditions are better than that of community conditions, job satisfaction is higher.

Most usually, workers compare job's 'way of life' with the community way of living and they are more satisfied when these two values come reasonably close together. If job's way of life is better than the community way of life, job satisfaction is higher and if job's way of life is worse than the community way of living, job satisfaction will be lower.