Job Dissatisfaction And Employee Responding: Constructive And Destructive Responses

The impact of job dissatisfaction on employee engagement and motivation

Discuss about the Business Communication for Journal of Stress Management.

Employees’ job dissatisfaction can come from manifold reasons; therefore the employers need to take care of the company’s policies as well as practices. Unhappy employees are dissatisfied as the employees do not find the motivation to give their best for the organisation (Men, 2014). The employee engagement of the employees is low when the employees are dissatisfied. The management can take feedback from the employees and tries to engage the employees in bringing motivation. This essay will discuss the job dissatisfaction of the unhappy employees and their responses are either constructively or destructively. Employee engagement and employee motivation is a very much intimate topic of job satisfaction. The employees need to find out the intrinsic motivation. Therefore, the key terms of the essay are job satisfaction, motivation, employee engagement and unhappy employees. The thesis statement of this essay is to highlight the constructive responding of the unhappy employees towards job dissatisfaction. At the first part of the essay reasons behind unhappiness of the employees in a workplace are explained and factors of job satisfaction are described along with this. Employees’ dissatisfaction reasons are provided with outcomes of the employee’s dissatisfaction are given. In the final sections, most effective means for employees to regain the job satisfaction are discussed.  

Employee satisfaction is very significant in the workplace and there is a disturbing trend that the employers cannot understand what makes the employees motivated and satisfied. Dissatisfied employees make the organisation leads to poor performance, high employee turnover rate and disengagement of the employees. The employees may have the limited personal engagement with the fellow employees and it can lead to unhappiness as they cannot engage in the workplace. Personal disengagement leads to the boredom at the workplace and they cannot find any intrinsic motivation. Algre, Mas-Machuca & Berbegal-Mirabent (2016) supported this by saying that the employees have to work within an organisation in a team and the employees should be tight-knit as well as connected to the team members. The authors further stated that connected and engaged employees can share the vision of the team and the team members will remain motivated automatically. In addition, the employees may not get the chance to share the feedback or new ideas to the management or team leaders; it could be a chance to get unhappy at the workplace. The employees may not get the opportunity to freely come up with the new concept and the management may get afraid to receive the feedback. Additionally, the employees may feel the workplace lacks the transparency of communication and they can feel suffocated within the workplace. The employees within an organisation sometimes talk behind the back of the management and this workplace culture dissatisfies the employees. Moreover, the employees may get less salary than what they expect and this could lead to the employee dissatisfaction. In addition, lack of employee motivation is another reason for the employee dissatisfaction. Employees need a good salary, incentives, promotions, good designation and bonuses in order to get extrinsic motivation. In addition, job dissatisfaction according to Huang & Rundle-Thiele (2014), influenced by hygiene factors within a workplace. Improving the hygiene factors decreases the job dissatisfaction within an organisation. The authors further argued that the factors of job dissatisfaction are co-worker relation, working condition, policies and rules, supervisor quality and salary and base wages. On the other side, motivators are recognition, achievement, work itself, advancement and personal growth. 

Factors behind job dissatisfaction and outcomes of dissatisfaction

 Job dissatisfaction can impact on all employees in various degrees at different times. The dissatisfaction can come from the less work-life balance, stress and it is also different how the employees choose to respond is significant than trying to deny suffer the consequences. EVLN Model states about the facilitation moment and the dissatisfaction of the employees. Employees can respond to job satisfaction in one way among the four ways like Exit, Voice, Neglect and Loyal. Exit means to leave the company and transferring to another workplace. The employees try to leave the organisation when they feel they are no longer valued for the organisation (Zhu et al., 2014). Exit follows specific events that provide a shock to the employees and these shock incidents can provide sudden urge to resign from the posts. In addition, voice means to attempt to change and the employees can try to escape from the dissatisfying situation. Voice of the employees is a constructive response and the employees can recommend the management the ways to improve the workplace culture to develop the situation (Giorgi, Shoss & Leon-Perez, 2015). The critics argued that the constructive response can be either confrontational or these responses can be formal grievances stated in emails. In some of the extreme cases, employees can engage in counterproductive behaviour in order to get the attention or force change of the company. Moreover, loyalty is described in a different process as loyal employees share their dissatisfaction by waiting patiently sometimes. As stated by Nantsupawat et al., (2017), suffer in silence is the case for the employees for the problem to work itself out or get resolved by others. The social virtues of silence can be reinforced with the survival instinct and organisations send the message verbally and non-verbally. Silence can be costly for the employees if they do not share it on time (Perlow & Williams, 2003). Lastly, neglect process is included with work efforts and it pays less attention to the quality. It follows to increase the lateness and absenteeism. Neglect process considers the passive activity towards employees’ job dissatisfaction as it is possibly the destructive response of the unhappy employees. The neglect responses have negative consequences for the firm and these are associated with the macro-environmental factors and personal factors. Some of the employees’ responses factors are the personality of the employees’ relationship with the leaders and managers, organisational culture and employment prospects.  

Constructive employee responses: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

The employees can get underpaid and it is one of the reasons behind the job dissatisfaction. The employees in today’s generation want to be the part of the organisation where they can find the career advancement and growth. If the organisation does not provide the employees with career growth, then, the employees leave the organisation. In case of the employees are dissatisfied with the organisation, they can focus on the choosing the right career paths minutely as they can do career counselling. The employees can find out their strengths and they can engage the trusted employees. According to Perlow and Williams (2003), an organisation can focus on developing the managers when the employees choose to leave the organisation out of job dissatisfaction and the HR professionals need to select the right staffs and the HR professionals need to take the right strategies to engage the employees. The authors stated that in constructive response, the employees make sure that the group of employees takes the decisions to shape the assessment shows the ethnic, cultural diversity, demographics of skills to be judged. The unhappy employees can share their views of the dissatisfaction in a responsible way with relevant information along with the ideas why the constructive process is being administered.   

While numerous employees search for employments completely in light of what pay they can hope to get, this is really not a decent method to make their career. Money is certainly critical, particularly since all have checks to pay and families to consider. Finding work or a profession way may feel enthusiastic about is really the ideal approach to prevail in business. One is really committed to profession or industry, it will appear. People will work harder in light of the fact that they will really appreciate the work they are doing (Giorgi, Shoss & Leon-Perez, 2015). On the other side, this diligent work is probably going to pay off as they rise speedier up the career stepping stool and achieve better positions. While contracting, management searches for hopefuls who appear to be honestly enthusiastic about the activity in the meeting, regardless of whether it’s face to face or through online video. So really, work fulfilment can prompt more cash and accordingly people should search for a profession one truly appreciates (Hsiao et al., 2015). If the employees become dissatisfied, it will lower the productivity of the organisation. Vroom’s Expectancy Theory proved that media correlation of the performance and satisfaction is 0.14. Dissatisfied employees leave the organisation and it increases the employee turnover. The dissatisfied employees mostly respond positively to the leaders or management about their dissatisfaction and sometimes, they fill the feedback form to let the managers know about the dissatisfaction. 

Destructive employee response: Neglect

To heighten business growth in terms of productivity and financial profitability, organisations tend to have satisfied employees who entail constructive orientation towards an entire mode of business operation. There is a range of effective means for employees that an organisation can escalate to regain job satisfaction amid the employees through the day-to-day business process. One of the most effective ways of improving employee satisfaction is to provide customised schedules where employees would have control over their schedules. As for instance, organisations can consider flex time or compressed workweeks as the alternative work schedule. With such strategy, employees can maintain their work-life balance effectively and they can show the constructive response to their workings. However, Othman et al., 2018) argued that, in this kind of workplace, employees could show less dedication towards their responsibilities and spend more leisure time in the workplace. As a result of this, the productivity of the company may reduce. The authors further concluded that one of the most effective ways to motivate employees is high wage and promotion. It is essential for the organisations to provide promotional initiative by giving employees high wage. On the contrary, Mone & London (2018) argued that jobs are a venue where employees grow and learn and thereby, most of the employees ranked job characteristic in the 1^st position of employee motivational strategies. Thus, high wage and promotion are not in top position for motivating employees surprisingly. Hence, employers can create an environment of growth by providing training, celebrating accomplishments and acknowledging benchmarks.

Apart from this, it is worth noting that, boring job roles may reduce employee motivation and they start showing destructive orientation towards their responsibilities. Hence, employers should encourage employees to take risks and learn new things and skills. In such environment, employees can show their skill level and innovative thinking throughout the process and they become motivated. However, Taylor (2014) argued when the management considers risk-taking business process then, this will make employees demotivated. This is because, employees have to spend more time in developing critical thinking and hence, they may lose work-life balance. Thus, another way to motivate employees is the collaborative work practice. Hence, employees get the opportunity to learn from the seniors and they will become able to improve own level of skill. Further, in the collaborative work culture, employees can share knowledge and information with the management and hence, employees can feel valued by the organisation. This is rather a most effective way of motivating an employee. However, on the contrary, Homberg, McCarthy & Tabvuma (2015) criticised the statement and stated that ‘silos’ (working in isolation) culture may motivate an individual as an employee can get the more flexibility and opportunity to make own schedule and take innovations to do the job. Apart from this, an unexpected pleasure (as such a special treat, surprise party or appreciation program) may enhance employee motivation level. Appreciation plays a pivotal role in encouraging an employee to perform positively and stay loyal in the workplace.  However, Zabalah et al., (2016) argued that these initiatives may enhance operational cost and hence cash inflow may increase. Therefore, organisations can consider such strategies to improve employee motivation by reducing the destructive side of these options.

Effective means for employees to regain job satisfaction

Conclusion

Therefore, it has been observed that job satisfaction does not always outcome in poor output. Moreover, it is quite possible for the employees to become productive and the employees can complain along with providing positive feedback. The employees have an option left to another employment opportunity. Conceptual learning isn’t sufficient to achieve the desired workplace satisfaction. In the event that individuals need to have practised skilled, people need to hone the aptitudes required not simply watch recordings about individuals who have. Fulfilment is a more feasible condition than bliss in the job. Accomplishing fulfilment isn’t too hard and ends up simpler if people complete a little subjective towards it. Employees’ dissatisfaction is unwanted within an organisation as it can lead to the high employee turnover. The employees need to communicate with the senior management so that they can constructively convey their issues. The things that stop the employees being emotional are enthusiastic, instead of intellectual blockages. Simply knowing, understanding, and concurring with, the ideas won’t change much beneath the surface of the mind-heart.

Reference List

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