Employee Behavior and Job Satisfaction
Assignment:
Employee Behavior and Job Satisfaction
Good employee engagement is key to an efficient and effective organization. Understanding job attitudes and job satisfaction is imperative to creating a productive organization.
The following Course Outcome is assessed in this assignment:
MT302-1: Describe the impact of individual behavior on business outcomes.
Read the fictional scenario and respond to the checklist items in a 2- to 3-page paper with an additional title page and reference page.
Scenario (fictional): The following four employees have different attitudes towards their jobs and different levels of job satisfaction which impact their behavior on the job at this beverage company. You are the human resources (HR) director who is becoming concerned regarding the behavior of some employees at work. Read the following background information on each of the four employees and address all the checklist items.
Employee #1: Marketing product manager: She experiences cognitive dissonance every time her boss tells her she should not worry about the lower end of the market as “those people don’t have much buying power,” when the company’s values statement says that the company values the welfare of everyone everywhere. She comes from a blue-collar family and resents the attitude of her boss towards low-income groups. She is frequently late to work, and her boss has given her a warning as a result.
Employee #2: Engineer: He is in a highly visible job creating new products that creates a lot of stress, and he works 12-hour days. He is loyal but feels depressed by the constant work. He is starting to look at job openings online in his off hours because his current long hours are starting to affect his family life.
Employee #3: Loading dock manager: This representative works the 12 a.m. – 7 a.m. shift. She does what is required but complains in the employee break room about the offices and work conditions when she is on break. The other employees tend to agree with her when she complains. Lately the distribution supervisor has noted employees’ reduced effort on the shift.
Employee #4: Distribution lead: He is the sole Hispanic employee in the organization and feels isolated, as though he is just a placeholder versus really making a recognized difference in the organization. The company promotes itself as a diverse organization, which he knows is not true. He feels as if everyone expects him to fail since not many people engage with him, including his boss, on any regular basis.
Checklist:
The four employees have different attitudes and levels of job satisfaction.
Describe the attitudes and job satisfaction of each of the four employees.
Categorize and explain the responses the employees have to dissatisfaction based on the reading.
Explain how the above attitudes and job satisfaction for each employee impact the organization in terms of profit, employee turnover, and affecting other employees’ attitudes.
Include at least two scholarly* citations with accompanying references regarding attitudes and job satisfaction and the impact on the organization that support your responses to the checklist item above.
Explain what each of the managers of the four employees can do to change the employees’ attitudes for the better (referencing at least two of Mintzberg’s managerial roles to explain your response).
Submit your 2- to 3-page paper with additional title and reference pages using current APA format and citation style (see the Unit 1 Reading for APA assistance) to the Dropbox.
*Scholarly sources have been put through a peer review by experts to ascertain that the content is original, supports any statements or claims with viable research, etc. These are also referred to as peer-reviewed articles, and they are usually found in scholarly journals.
ANSWER
Individual Behavior in Organizations
The behavior and attitude of employees are vital to the productivity of an organization. It is therefore essential for an organization to ensure that the employees are satisfied with the working conditions and working hours to ensure the company is maximizing the profits. Managers can motivate employees by setting achievable and realistic goals and rewarding them once the goals are achieved. The product manager in the first scenario is showing signs of dissatisfaction with her job because her employer does not show any value for the low-income communities (Madan, 2017). As a person coming from a low-income community, she feels insulted that the beverage company does not follow its value statement, which is valuing the welfare of every person. By not doing so, the marketing product manager is not motivated to sell the company’s product, leading to her frequent lateness, which directly affects the company’s profits. As a result of her dissatisfaction with the job, she is late to work and is not interested in making profits for the company.
The second employee is loyal, but he is not satisfied with the long working hours. The company is going to lose profits if the employee finds a job with better working hours. He is a job creator, which means that the company creates profits through the many projects he creates. Losing a loyal employee can also take a toll on the company’s profits because replacing such an employee cannot be easy. The loss of a dedicated employee can also have a negative impact on the other employees (Wolter et al, 2019). They are also likely to follow suit and resign from the company because they will have realized that they are worth more than the company is letting on and that they deserve better working hours. If the engineer resigns, the others are likely to follow suit.
The third employee, the loading dock manager, complains of the working conditions. Her complaints are public and are often overheard by the junior employees, which has lowered the company’s productivity (Leder et al, 2017). The job dissatisfaction with the organization’s working conditions is moving from the top and trickling down to the employees, which is bad for the company’s profits as they are likely to decrease their productivity which will affect the company.
The fourth employee is dissatisfied with the diversity of the company. He is the only Hispanic working in the company, and the company boasts of its diversity. The isolation felt by the Hispanic employee is lowering his productivity which is bad for the company’s profits. He is the only Hispanic employee in the company, which leaves him with very few people to interact with, which leads to him feeling lonely and dissatisfied with his working environment.
However, the four managers have a chance to improve the conditions of the employees and improve job satisfaction (Barakat et al, 2016). For the first employee, the manager can begin by ensuring that the marketing product manager has covered products for all people. That is, their quality products are also sold to low-income communities. This will motivate the employee to come to work and do her work. The engineer can be motivated through being given reasonable hours and bonuses for any extra hours he puts in. He should also be motivated for every new project he brings to the company. The third employee can be motivated by improving the working conditions of the organization. Improved working conditions motivate employees and increase productivity. The fourth employee can be motivated through the company embracing diversity and employing more diverse cultures and races. They can also treat him like the other employees and associate more with him.
References
Barakat, S. R., Isabella, G., Boaventura, J. M. G., & Mazzon, J. A. (2016). The influence of corporate social responsibility on employee satisfaction. Management decision.
Leder, S., Newsham, G. R., Veitch, J. A., Mancini, S., & Charles, K. E. (2016). Effects of office environment on employee satisfaction: a new analysis. Building research & information, 44(1), 34-50.
MADAN, S. (2017). MOVING FROM EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION TO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT. CLEAR International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management, 8(6).
Wolter, J. S., Bock, D., Mackey, J., Xu, P., & Smith, J. S. (2019). Employee satisfaction trajectories and their effect on customer satisfaction and patronage intentions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(5), 815-836.
