Job satisfaction and employee motivation in management practice

¶ … Job Satisfaction

In evaluating the concepts and theories behind job satisfaction and motivation, what unifies both areas of study is the common thread of how to ensure employees' performance is aligned with the needs of the organization, and second ensuring that expectations and priorities are clearly understood. It is the responsibility of managers to make sure they are setting accurate, clearly defined expectations for their subordinates. Rather than being autocratic, the best managers also act as enablers for change for their subordinates, giving them positive reinforcement and welcoming their ownership of their jobs. Once an employee or subordinate has a sense of ownership regarding their job, motivation significantly increases, and with that, intensity, persistence and the investing of time to accomplish key tasks increases. Simply put, motivated employees work at a significantly faster speed, producing significantly higher quality work while feeling much better about themselves in their jobs. What makes job satisfaction and motivation so difficult to achieve however is that it cannot directly be created; it must be nurtured and developed over time. Experienced managers realize that each employee is motivated by a different factor, and that managing the motivation of each subordinate is a crucial part of their day-to-day job.

Critique of Articles

The two articles analyze the components of job satisfaction and motivation. It is apparent that job satisfaction isn't created and then sustained; it must be continually added to and strengthened over time. Further analysis shows that job satisfaction also creates and sustains a high level of autonomy as well, both for the manager and subordinate. Employees have attain the highest levels of job satisfaction have been able to master their specific tasks while also having the tenacity of excel and grow with the needed skills over time. Mastery and acknowledgment of continual improvement of performance is what leads to a growing level of job satisfaction over time.

While job satisfaction is the inward manifestation of an employees' mastery and recognition of continually improving and excelling at their work, motivation is the most outward manifestation of how an employee perceives the value of their work and contributions. As the article states, motivation includes the factors of how an employee chooses to use their time, their intensity of effort, and the persistence level that work is completed at. These are all outward manifestation of someone's job satisfaction, and often are predictors of how much ownership and mastery they feel over their jobs. What makes managing very difficult as a profession is the fact that the underlying motivators of what gets each employee to a level of performance on these factors varies significantly. As the article states, one cannot simply offer more money, because for some employees time off, recognition, additional responsibilities, or the opportunity to redefine their job all are more motivating to them.