Personality and Job Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction might be one of the most difficult measures in management to quantify. There are so many ways to judge this factor, from self-evaluation to independent evaluation to more concrete numbers like productivity, which has been linked to job satisfaction.

There is no industry-wide standard for assessing employee satisfaction, and yet it is one of the most important factors in a successful work environment. This paper will explore the influence of an individual's personality and character traits on their job satisfaction; instead of seeing job satisfaction as a result of outside influences, I hypothesize that an employee's individual personality and attitude are important factors in his or her job satisfaction. That is to say, an employee who is otherwise unhappy and gloomy will most likely not be happy in his or her workplace either, and conversely, an employee with a positive outlook and an upbeat personality will be satisfied and fulfilled in the workplace.

This paper will first explain the concept of personality, of job satisfaction, and of the relationship between job satisfaction and productivity in the workplace. I will do this through examining various outside literature on these topics, most notably the definitions of personality and attitude from our textbook, the relationship between character traits and work behavior, and the relationship between outside influences and job performance and satisfaction.

After this examination of what constitutes personality and the possible influences that it may have on work performance, I will detail a "mini-survey" which was taken from the over 100 employees whom I supervise regarding their own personality traits and job satisfaction. The results of this survey were then combined with my own evaluations of the employees as well as their productivity numbers to analyze the effects that personality and attitude have on employee satisfaction, which, in turn, affects our productivity. I will finally evaluate these findings in terms of how to best address the issue of personality and attitude in our workplace to encourage job satisfaction and thus, productivity.

Personality may be defined as "the overall profile or combination of stable characteristics that capture the unique nature of a person."

Personality is an important factor in a person's behavior, which is a person's response to a situation based on both the situation as well as his or her personality.

These two determinants -- personality and behavior -- are important factors in how an employee performs in the workplace as well as what type of attitude he or she has with regard to work. Although it has been studied and found that "a simple, direct linkage between job satisfaction and job performance often doesn't exist," this finding does not make the importance of job satisfaction to job performance any less important; it only means that it is more difficult to gauge and measure.

Personality has been evaluated traditionally through an examination of the "Big Five" personality traits -- these traits, scholars say, give an accurate perception of a person's overall personality. The traits evaluated in this Big Five theory are adjustment, sociability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and intellectual openness.

Adjustment includes a person's self-confidence and mood stability; sociability addresses a person's attitude toward others (friendly and outgoing or shy and quiet); conscientiousness involves responsibility and dependability; agreeableness addresses if a person is warm and polite or uncaring toward others; and finally, intellectual openness assesses if a person is imaginative and curious or literal-minded.

These traits give a better, more standardized assessment of someone's personality and are the criteria that will be utilized in my own study to assess employee's attitudes and personality traits.

Having a full definition of personality, I will now move on to examining the studies of personality on individual employees' job satisfaction. As noted earlier, a direct linkage between job satisfaction and job performance is difficult to establish; however, indirect effects of job satisfaction and overall personality traits have been made with regard to job performance and other important criteria, such as likelihood of seeking other employment.

Although the examination of personality and job satisfaction is an involved one, I believe that the literature shows that individual employees' personality does influence their job satisfaction, and that an employee's happiness in the workplace has an important effect on their performance and productivity.

At least one study has addressed the importance of hiring employees based on their "fit" with the organization as a whole, and not just the fit between an applicant's knowledge, skills, and abilities with their direct job duties.

An employee must feel a connection with their organization as a whole in order to feel their best about the job which they are assigned to, and will do their best work when they feel as though the overall goals of the organization are aligned with their own goals and values. This idea of "organizational commitment" is discussed in our textbook as "the strength of an employee's involvement in the organization and identification with it."

It involves loyalty to the organization as well as the willingness to go "above and beyond" the immediate job duties in order to further the goals of the organization; I believe that this organizational commitment has a direct effect on productivity since employees who are loyal to the organization will be more satisfied in their jobs due to this and will also be willing to perform at a higher standard, thus increasing their productivity by managing their job satisfaction.

In examining these varied relationships, it seems evident that an individual's overall personality and character traits would influence their job satisfaction. However, the leap from one to the other is not so simple, especially when attempting to quantitatively analyze such a theory. The textbook examines the links between attitude and general personality traits to behavior in terms of general vs. specific attitudes and the behaviors which they can be used to best predict. General attitudes, such as a person's overall feelings toward religion, are not a good indicator of specific behaviors, such as if that person will donate to a church-related charity.

But if the situation was attempting to predict general behavior as opposed to specific, the person's general antipathy toward religion would become a more important factor, since people who are generally averse to something (religion, in this case) will be generally less likely to participate (attending church services regularly, for example).

In applying this idea of general attitudes vs. specific attitudes and their predictive value to business and management practices, one might separate the idea of "general" loyalty to the organization from "specific" likes or dislikes with regard to daily tasks. An employee might be generally happy in their job, but specifically dislike their operating system on the computers in their department. These different definitions of attitude and how it influences behavior make gauging employee satisfaction based on attitudes and personality traits especially complicated and subjective.

In creating a method of evaluating employee personality, then using this information to judge overall employee satisfaction as well as performance, I tried to incorporate most aspects of personality and attitude in a manner that would give an accurate assessment of the individual's "big five" personality traits. I did this by making five questions in the mini-survey self-descriptions from the definition of the "big five" traits; in other words, five of the questions in the mini-survey asked if employees would describe themselves as "gregarious and outgoing" or "shy and more withdrawn" in order to judge the employee's self-evaluation of sociability, for example.

The first five questions on our mini-survey addressed these "big five" concepts and allowed the employees to self-evaluate. The following five questions allowed employees to express how they believed other saw them, for example, if someone considered themself to be dependable but knew that others considered them impulsive, that would be a factor in determining their overall conscientiousness. Obviously, self-evaluations are not always accurate; many times a person may consider themselves to be one way when others see them in a completely different light. These five questions (based again, on the Big Five personality traits) allowed for more information regarding how the employee is perceived by his or her peers. These questions were rated on a one to five basis, with one relating to one side of the Big Five personality traits (i.e., shyness, literal-mindedness) and five relating to the other side (i.e., gregariousness, confidence in self). A three, for example, would signify a neutral response to the question, with variance to either side signifying a predisposition to that particular trait.

After these ten questions regarding personality, the mini-survey moved on to job satisfaction criteria. Questions regarding an employee's overall satisfaction with work included how secure they felt their job was, how likely they were to seek other employment, if they enjoyed the company of coworkers and supervisors personally, if their job challenged them, if their job interested them, if they were happy with the physical conditions in which they worked, and if they were happy with pay, benefits, and rewards offered by their position. The second half of the mini-surveys used simple one to five ratings, with one being absolutely unsatisfactory (or more likely to leave the organization) and five being perfectly happy with the specific criterion being analyzed.

These mini-surveys were distributed to the over 100 employees whom I supervise with paychecks one Friday, with an explanatory letter that management wanted to find out more information on employee satisfaction and personality. The letter explained that the mini-surveys were important to the organization's overall goals as well as the fact that they could impact individual working situations; it also emphasized that the mini-surveys were strictly anonymous responses and, as such, could not be used in employee evaluations for any matter and would not impact in any way an employee's job security so as to encourage honesty and openness in employees' responses. In providing this measure of anonymity, we encouraged bluntness and complete honesty due to the fact that not only would answers be kept confidential among management, but that in no way could a respondent's comments regarding or ratings of the organization as a whole or his or her particular job and its drawbacks and benefits be used in a negative manner toward that employee.

Simply by distributing these mini-surveys, it is possible that employee morale and satisfaction will be improved. Some experts say that simply asking people what they think is "cathartic" and can have a positive effect on their mood, attitude, and even on their overall job satisfaction.

We received a very positive response in terms of the percentage of employees who returned the mini-surveys -- over 80% of the surveys distributed via paychecks were returned to the main office.

In analyzing the mini-surveys, I assessed first the personality self-evaluations, quantifying our employees with regard to how they perceived their own personality traits. The second section, reporting how others perceived these traits, was quantified in the same manner, i.e., 20% of employees considered themselves impulsive, or 85% of employees reported that others considered them friendly. These numbers were then set aside for later comparison with the job satisfaction numbers. These job satisfaction numbers, regarding the second half of the survey's responses to questions about overall satisfaction with specific areas of an individual's position, were totaled and listed as percentages of respondents who were in the positive range of responses (4 or 5), employees who were neutral in their responses (3), and employees who had a negative perception of the issue being examined (1 or 2). These groups were compiled and then compared to the personality traits to determine the effects that personality might have on job satisfaction.

Almost all of the individuals who scored themselves as more positive in the personality section were also happy overall with their work. In making this judgement, I assessed the personality reporting of both the self-reported scores and the "perceptions of others" scores in terms of whether it was positive, negative, or neutral. I then rated each respondent as positive, negative, or neutral overall in terms of their personality. Secondly, I assessed the job satisfaction questions with regard to these same positive, negative, or neutral criteria. Very few employees were ranked as "neutral" overall due to the possibility of "somewhat" answers, i.e. A two or a four response.

Almost unanimously, employees who reported that they possessed positive personality traits and that others saw them as a positive influence also reported overall satisfaction with their positions. That is not to say that employees with positive personalities did not report any problems or concerns about things like job security, benefits, or other stressors, but that their overall response to the job satisfaction portion of the mini-survey was an average of 4.1. The employees with a negative personality in terms of the "Big Five" criteria reported slightly lower job satisfaction ratings, averaging 3.8. Although both of these numbers are above "neutral" and demonstrate that on average, all of the production employees whom I supervise are at least "somewhat" satisfied with their jobs overall, the employees who possess positive personality attributes are more likely to feel happy in their positions and to support the organization as a whole.

The importance of this information to my own performance as a supervisor is vital. Many organizations do not spend much time or many resources in evaluating employee satisfaction, and by ignoring this important quality measure, can lose valuable workers. Experts have noted the importance of monitoring and evaluating employee satisfaction as well as productivity, as the two are closely related.

Positive, happy employees are more likely to feel fulfilled and challenged in their work, and to demonstrate loyalty and high performance for the organization. By encouraging these traits, a manager can also encourage better productivity in his workforce.

I plan to encourage positive attitudes and personality traits by creating a workplace that is enjoyable and not rigid or impersonal. Giving employees the chance to interact with one another and form friendships and bonds is one way of creating this positive atmosphere, which will hopefully lead to more positive attitudes among all employees. I will encourage these interactions by establishing communal areas for breaks and lunches, where employees may congregate during shift changes, mealtimes, and other stoppages of work. I will also implement social activities, such as sporting events, meals at a supervisor's home or in a restaurant, and casual gatherings in which employees can interact and bond outside of work. I will emphasize to my employees that as their direct supervisor, I am always available and want them to feel comfortable in their jobs, so if anything arises that might detract from their job performance or overall satisfaction in their position, I can be reached and will be happy to help fix the problem or issue in any way that I can.