Job Performance and Satisfaction (Essay Sample)

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE JOB PERFORMANCE
Name
Institution Affiliation
Course
Date of Submission
Job performance and job satisfaction by workers is influenced by the cognition; emotion and mental state of employees and their responses events in their work environment that have adverse effect t o job commitment satisfaction and performance. Workers mood and emotion explains affective work behaviors, while cognitive behaviors best predicts workers job satisfaction (Wegge, van Dick, Fisher, West, & Dawson, 2006). Workers are constantly exposed to intense pressure as they attempt to provide high quality services in their work station. The pressure is characterized by the rapid advancement in technology, shifting priorities and leaner staffs, in addition to budgetary cutbacks. The performance of tasks by workers is contributed by such pressures due to the belief that features and resources that cope with stressful conditions are scarce. Employees who have a feeling of defeat result to a lower organizational commitment and impaired performance. In contrast employees who have the feeling of being heroes flourish as they perceive grater personal accomplishment. The causes of job performance within an organization are found in both individual and job environment. This essay is aimed to examine the factors that contribute to work motivation on employee performance in an organization.
Maslow’s need theory provide value that lies in the implication of organization management. This is because the theory is able to suggest how organizations can make their employees to become self actualized (Ajan, 2009). Employees who are self-actualized have the capacity to work to their maximum potentials. It is therefore, imperative for organizations to ensure that employees are able to meet their need by recognizing employees’ accomplishments. Recognition of employees’ accomplishments is paramount so as to satisfy their esteemed needs. This recognition should be in form of awards as it enhances employees to develop ways of imp roving customers’ satisfaction and business performance (Greenberg & Baron, 2003). However, recognition of employees through rewards is effective at enhancing esteem by clearly being linked to desired behaviors. Too general awards may fail to meet this specification.
Research has indicated how workers experience their job and work environment related stressors that have an adverse effect to their safety and health. Many stressors such as conflict of roles, work load, pressure, physical discomfort, and role ambiguity result in dissatisfaction of work and burnouts (Zellars, Hochwater, Hoffman, Perrewé, & Ford, 2004). The negative impact to such stressors is usually reduced by factors such as a social environment that is supportive which includes the cohorts and supervisors, rewards, autonomy and utilization of skill. Additionally, an emphasis on planning and efficiency play an import ant role as it ensures the performance of the organization is strong and has visible commitment to safety which assures health of workers (Lundstrom, Pugliese, Bartley, Cox, & Guither, 2002). The attitude of workers, job satisfaction and employee health are related to work performance, productivity that eventually culminates to quality services in the organization.
A safe environment which refers to the shared perception of workers with respect to the level of safety of their work environment is associated with the positive attitudes that enhance adaption of safe behaviors. These positive attitudes among the workers influence job satisfaction and performance. Management that is concerned with safety of its workers supports their efforts as they utilize safety related problems to improve their system of service delivery (Lundstrom, Pugliese, Bartley, Cox, & Guither, 2002).
Stress and job burnout are other factors that affects the performance of workers in an organization. These are factors that result due to stress in service occupation. Workers demonstrate burnout by symptoms of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminishing personal accomplishment. In situation where work demands cannot be me due lack of resources such as resources and supportive coworkers, utilization of skills, job control, and rewards, job burnouts are usually experienced (Lundstrom, Pugliese, Bartley, Cox, & Guither, 2002). Workers who experience burnout have poor coping responses and lack job satisfaction because they feel being overloaded with work and have conflicting roles thereby eroding commitment to the organization in realizing higher turnover (Zellars, Hochwater, Hoffman, Perrewé, & Ford, 2004). Supervisor and coworker support contributes either positively or negatively to perceived stress that results in burnout leading to job dissatisfaction and depression among workers.
The components that are associated with work and their impact on the outcome support the affective action theory because those task which are considered rewarding though challenging provides an opportunity for development of new skills t hereby inducing positive affect and increase job satisfaction. Conversely, those tasks that are perceived to be boring and as a daily routine are associated to negative affects since workers have low esteem and self-confidence which can lead to the behavior of quitting jobs.
The workers autonomy in their jobs impact their productivity and satisfaction because the workers have the opportunity to make decisions that influence what happens on the job, and this has the greatest effect on their job satisfaction (Wegge, van Dick, Fisher, West, & Dawson, 2006). The income satisfaction is highly triumphed by job autonomy. On the other hand, workers who have work overload have been seen their job satisfaction reduce significantly because they feel their role are ambiguous performing below par.
Flexibility is another aspect that adversely affects job satisfaction in an organization. This is because flexibility enables workers to decide when they need to work by ran king which job has the characteristics of satisfaction. Like job autonomy, job flexibility is seen to be more important than income in evaluating job satisfaction (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). This is because flexibility enables one to decide on one’s work schedule which is a contributor to job satisfaction. Employees are empowered by reduced incidents of conflicts and thus, engage actively to improve quality of service delivery as well as their quality of life. The benefit of work flexibility hinges on the positive affects that reward heavily to both employees and employers thereby empowering employees and improving employer’s ability to retain workers.
Research has suggested that work affects as being a construct of state orientations such as mood and emotions, which are dependent of the work situation or environment that is encountered (Watson & Clark, 1984). Moreover, affects is a trait that is dependent on individuals which has a significant effects on employees. Workers mood determines their reaction intensity to events that they have been experiencing at work. The emotional responses hence, affect the performance and productivity of workers, in addition to their satisfaction. The positive and negative perception of events experienced at work also affects workers effort, deviance and commitment to their job.
Workers job performance is also affected by personality and general cognitive ability (Watson & Clark, 1984). This is because cognition and emotion enhance workers to be identified with their organization. One job emotions are usually associated with organizational behavior and is directed to an individual, while cognition of a job is strongly associated with the organizational behavior and directed toward the whole organization (Lee & Allen, 2002). The outcome regarding how an individual is satisfied with their job is dependent on how they perceive experiences of events at work. The emotions and thoughts that are associated with workers perception demonstrates their satisfaction, in addition to the support provided by their supervisors and coworkers.
Delayed gratification also known as conscientiousness is a personality traits t hat depicts regulation of impulsiveness by determining plans to attain a non immediate goal. Conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance and training as well as occupational attainment (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999). Employee’s self-discipline, self-initiative industriousness and time management demonstrates conscientiousness, which positively predicts job satisfaction and job compensation of individual’s career.
High conscientiousness is correlated with accomplishment of complex tasks by workers and the general cognitive ability (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999). Conscientious workers perceive procedural fairness to be highly important than rewards to influence their exit from an organization. The interaction between low performers members general cognition and conscientiousness on pro-social behavior of a team indicates that other team members portray high pro-social behavior than the poor performer. Therefore, team members tend to portray a moderate pro-social behavior when the low performers in their team demonstrate low general cognition and conscientiousness.
Low employee turnover is demonstrated by the stability of emotions and conscientiousness as well as high job performance. This is an indication that personality traits are robust and should be considered in selection of subsequent validation analysis. Conscientiousness accounts for moral and ethical as well as contractual obligations that lead to employee turnover (Zellars, Hochwater, Hoffman, Perrewé, & Ford, 2004). Employee high in conscientiousness mental state demonstrates a high organization...