The Relationship Between Employee Performance And Job Satisfaction: Importance, Measures, And Research Methodology

The Importance of Employee Performance and Job Satisfaction

Organizations that seek high standards of employees’ performance should become a source of satisfaction for their employees. Motivation and job satisfaction are related to employee performance level and success at workplace, as they could be influenced in a positive or negative way. When the intrinsic motivation is high, employees can enjoy working and devoting more time and effort in fulfilling the required work and improving their job performance (Rusu & Avasilcai 2013).

The workforce production level is very important to profit-oriented organizations that is why the job performance became the main focus of organizational behavior research. According to Landy (1989), as cited in Ajzen (2011), the relationship between the employee performance and job satisfaction is of high importance that is why researchers call it the called Holy Grail of the organizational behavior. Over the time, various measures were developed to assess employee performance and job satisfaction. Organizations have to predict the employees’ performance over a period of time to recognize the anticipated changes in performance. Also, motivational factors should be considered and utilized to increase the employees’ performance and their level of satisfaction (Timar 2015).

The following sections shed light on the importance of the research, the research objectives, the literature review, the research methodology, the layout of the population and sample, data collection and analysis method, ethical issues and the search project plan.

Employee performance and job satisfaction has a long and controversial history as two linked concepts. From an organizational perspective, it is very important to assure that the right employees with the highest skills and talents are attracted and retained. Organizations also concern with maintaining the best performance of the workforce, through employee engagement and motivation. Organizations have to provide a good workplace that increases the employee performance and influences the level of job satisfaction. It has been proven in research that job satisfaction reduces the level of turnover for good employees. Employee satisfaction reveals the extent of employee content and acceptance to his job role (Odembo 2013).

From a personal perspective, job performance reflects the extent to which the employee does his job well or not. It reflects the way the employee performs the required tasks. Investigating the relationship between the employee performance and the job satisfaction is very important as it reveals the different factors that affect the employee performance mainly the workplace conditions and its relation to the level of satisfaction. The environment of the workplace represents the physical location where the employee does his daily activities and tasks (javed 2014).

Measures of Employee Performance and Job Satisfaction

To examine the relationship between employee performance and job satisfaction.

• To investigate the impact of the performance elements on the job satisfaction.
• To examine the relation between the motivators and the hygiene factors on the job satisfaction level.
• To investigate the elements of job satisfaction and the theoretical foundation and approaches.
• To analyze the task proficiency and performance evaluation.

The employee can view the job performance as a result of a series of behaviors. As the tasks he performs daily directly contribute to the job performance. The influential model developed by Campbell (1993), as cited in Berghe (2011), describes eight dimensions of job performance as follows:

• The job-specific task proficiency, including the employee behavior in relation to the core tasks of the job.
• Non-job-specific proficiency of doing work in general and independently of the main individual tasks.
• Communication either written or oral with people inside or outside the work place, in other works the communication network.
• The employee level of commitment to the core tasks that shows the efforts demonstrated.
• Ensuring that the personal discipline is maintained.
• Facilitating others performance, including peers and teams.
• Leadership style and its impact on the individual performance of the employees
• Management skills and its ability to enhance the employees performance

Performance evaluation is done by managers to analyze and assess the results of every employee and he achieved successes in fulfilling their tasks within a particular period of time. It is the process that controls the efficiency and the level of production capacity of employees. Employees’ personal qualities and talents, their willingness to work and the work environment determine their success in the organization. Performance evaluation has two main goals, first, to judge by the current performance quality through assessing the employee’s degree of success. Second, to select the calibers that could be placed in the top management according to their performance and skills. Accordingly, performance evaluation is very important to enable employees to improve their performance and to select the best-talented people as managers (Vural, et al., 2012). 

It refers to the employee behaviors that can be formalized at work in relation to his ability to complete his tasks and are not related in a social context. These behaviors measure the degree of matching between the employee and the requirements and expectations his individual role. The individual task proficiency and the concept of ‘task performance’ are closely related. Task performance is considered the most important factor in Johnson model, 2003. Citizenship performance corresponds citizenship constructs, namely “helping behavior” and “personal support”, these concepts have a voluntary nature of these behaviors and they are not related to the change-oriented actions of the proactive behavior. The adaptive performance does not differentiate between the organizational role and the individual and team role. Although, employees have to adapt to the changes that occur at the organizational level which represent the majority of changes that happen, for example, the decisions of business process re-engineering. According to Johnson model (2003), as cited in Vural, et al. (2012), elements of individual task proficiency are as follows:

1. Task performance: Including the job-specific and non-job-specific proficiency of doing tasks, the proficiency of both written and oral communication, management and supervision.
2. Citizenship performance: Including individual initiative, individual and organizational willingness to support others.
3. An adaptive individual performance that reflects the ability of dealing with risk and uncertainty.

The studies reveal that employee performance is positively linked to job satisfaction. Organizations desire to recruit and retain trained, talented and highly skilled employees. The higher performance employee desires attractive package from the workplace and the employer has to respond to this desire in order to retain the highly skilled employee.  This leads us to an important issue that the employee commitment is adversely affected by the low level of satisfaction which negatively affects the organizational performance and its ability to fulfill its desired goals (javed 2014).

The Research Methodology

Employee job satisfaction is linked to how people feel, think and recognize their jobs. Job satisfaction is about employees’ general emotions towards the different elements of their job and workplace, and the degree to which employees like what they do. Job satisfaction is related to behavior, motives and proceeds, it is considered a measurement of the employee’s intention towards their workplace (javed 2014).

To realize the real factors that satisfy people towards their workplace is a multi-faceted issue. These factors could be positive or negative, and employees could be satisfied with a group of factors and dissatisfied with others. Researchers as Robbins (2001), as cited in Odembo (2013), argue that the working conditions could influence the job satisfaction, as the physical work environment including hygiene, temperature, noise, working hours and access to resources. The poor working conditions are expected to affect the level of employees’ satisfaction level. Also the level of pay influences the level of satisfaction, but it is not the only factor that controls the level of job satisfaction, according to Oshagbemi (2000), as cited in Odembo (2013), a significant relationship does exist between the pay and rank and the level of employees’ job satisfaction. Despite pay, both of recognition and financial reward are found by researchers to significantly affect the knowledge worker job satisfaction level. Recognition and remuneration create value for the employees at the workplace that is why their level of job satisfaction increases.

There are three different approaches that describe and measure the employees’ job satisfaction, as follows:

• The first approach is the information processing model, it is concerned with the characteristics of the job. The model assumes that employees collect information about the organization, the job and the workplace and their cognitive assessment controls the satisfaction level.
• The second approach assumes that the social information, as a consequence of past behavior is the source of measurement of the job satisfaction level in workplace. It means that the level of job satisfaction of the employee is determined by the evaluation of other employees at work.
• The third approach relates the level of job satisfaction with the employee perspective and personality.

Frederick Herzberg (1959), as cited in Berghe (2011), in the two-factor theory assumes that two factors affect the overall job satisfaction level, they are the motivators and the hygiene factors. Moreover, it assumes that the motivators are responsible for increasing the job satisfaction level, but the absence of the hygiene factors can result in job dissatisfaction at the workplace. The hygiene factors include the salary, working conditions and safety. Herzberg assumes that the motivation stems from the job itself and managers are responsible for the job nature they ask the employees to do. Accordingly, good job leads to better employee performance and increased job satisfaction level.

The job satisfaction model consists of a group of elements, according to Shrm (2009), they are as follows:

• The organizational commitment to employee professional development.
• Offering career advancement opportunities.
• Availability of career development opportunities to enable employees to learn and gain professional growth.
• Availability of job-specific training.
• Opportunities offered to employees to communicate with others to assist in their career advancement.
• Opportunities to use the skills of employees at workplace.
• Offering training and tuition reimbursement of self-development programs.
• The degree of communication between employees and supervisors.
• The delegation of authority and decision making.
• Direct supervisor relationship with employees.
• The pay rate and reward system.
• Other advantages, including health care, life insurance for dependents, paid time off, retirement benefits.
• Work life balance. 

This research follows the positivism paradigm as the philosophical paradigm, the researcher is assumed to behave in a passive way and keeps neutral (Keele 2012). This research philosophy is related to the natural science philosophy that ensures unambiguity and accounts for the delivery of accurate knowledge (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill 2009). As the cultural values, aspects and beliefs should not affect the research to ensure objectivity (Schlegel 2015).

Population and Sample

The quantitative approach is to be used in this research to provide a clear definition of the questions examining the relationship between the events (Greasley 2008). According to Dssa & Arends 2012, it tests the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. Data is often gathered by using structured questionnaires that could be analyzed with the suitable statistical tools, the results could be generalized to the population. Accordingly, the quantitative method is a involves empirical research in a scientific way to provide the reality of the researched phenomenon. It depends on the research main assumption and the results are interpreted according to the perspective of the research and the researcher level of knowledge (Qambar 2015).

There are methods to be used in the quantitative analysis to calculate the variables under investigation and draw conclusions. Tools of data collection include structured interviews or questionnaires that could be self-administrated in oral or written format. Large sample size ensures the delivery of accurate results. The results are represented in visualized graphs and tables to support the findings. Accordingly, the quantitative approach familiarizes the researcher with the concepts used in the research and results could be generated through hypotheses testing (Qambar 2015). This research will use the questionnaire as the most useful technique to collect the research data.

The questionnaires would be self-administrated, they will be distributed to the respondents and collected after they are filled with the respondents’ opinions. The survey will done in selected large corporations in the USA and the researcher assemble groups of employees to fill the questionnaires at their workplace.

Data represents facts collected by the researcher to be analyzed by using various techniques. A survey is a tool that takes place in the research setting to test the hypotheses. It is used by the researcher to describe the targeted population characteristic or several characteristics (Paradis et al. 2016; Norris et al. 2015). Data will be collected from large corporations to measure the impact of the employee performance on job satisfaction.

Questionnaire technique: self-administrated or written questionnaire is used for data collection. Some factors should be assured by the researcher before distributing the questionnaire to the respondents, including the precise list of information sources, the relevance of the questions to the problem, ensure that each question is assigned to measure one element, ensure the objectivity of the questions and questions are clear and flow logically (Iro, 2013).

There are two main types of questionnaires used for data collection, first, the open-ended questionnaire, which provides the chance to the respondents to write and express their opinions and second, the close-ended questionnaire, which provides certain choices and allows the respondent to select the most suitable answer (Zohrabi 2013). The designed questionnaire will be close-ended, it will consider the 2 variables of the employee performance and job satisfaction. The measuring scale will be the LIKERT scale that reflects one to five point scale that ranges from strongly disagree to strongly agree (Office of planning, assessment, research, and quality 2015).

Data Collection and Analysis Method

The random sampling method will be applied (Osorio 2014). It will consider employees in a sample of large corporations within the USA, employee is the sample unit.  

The researcher has to choose among different analysis techniques to be applied to the problem. Before analysis takes place, data should be prepared. Testing data quality is very important as it affects data validity, the researcher has to treat the missing values and the extreme values (Kandel et al. 2012). Data errors should be eliminated to ensure its reliability and validity before the analysis takes place. The simple regression analysis is a bivariate dependence technique, it will be used in data analysis to estimate the relationship between the research variables (Namestnikova 2011).

Social research should assure trust in in the research outcomes. It is important for researchers to apply the basic ethical principles when conducting their research to ensure the safety and generalizability of the research. According to Houston, (2016), there are six principles of ethical research, including benefits and rights maximization for both the individuals and the society, risk reduction, informing the respondents with the research objectives, ensuring the integrity and transparency of the research, definition of the important features of the research including accountability, responsibility, ensuring independence and objectivity of the research.

	Plan Duration		Actual Start
ACTIVITY	Week
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Designing the questionnaire: A close-ended questionnaire is to be designed. Relevant questions should be included to collect information about employee performance and  job satisfaction in large corporations	1-2
Schedule time for distributing questionnaires: The employees at large corporations to be asked about their opinions should be listed, and the HR departments should be contacted in official ways to arrange for appropriate data collection timing. The appointments should be confirmed.	3-4
Data collection and entry: The population size is the determinant of the sample size. The sample will consider the large corporations in the USA to ensure the maturity of the organizations in the sample then to be able to generalize the search results to the society.	5-6
Data analysis: After the researcher collects the filled questionnaires from the respondents, the appropriate statistical software should be used to analyze data. The researcher should treat the missing data and conduct the reliability and validity tests before data analysis to ensure the accuracy of data. Then the regression method is to be applied to analyze data.	7-8
Writing the data analysis report: The data analysis results should be documented in the report and the recommendations should be written in the light of the research results.	9-10

Conclusions

Organizations concern with maintaining the best performance of the workforce, through employee engagement and motivation. They have to provide a good workplace that increases the employee performance and influences the level of job satisfaction. From a personal perspective, job performance reflects the extent to which the employee does his job well or not. It reflects the way the employee performs the required tasks.

Performance evaluation is done by managers to analyze and assess the results and successes achieved by every employee in fulfilling their tasks within a particular period of time. Job satisfaction is related to behavior, motives and proceeds, it is considered a measurement of the employee’s intention towards their workplace. Studies reveal that employee performance is positively linked to job satisfaction. The organizational success is a function of the performance of its workforce. Accordingly, if the employee level of job satisfaction increases, he could show better performance.

This research follows the positivism paradigm as the philosophical paradigm, the researcher is assumed to behave in a passive way and keeps neutral. The quantitative approach is to be used in this research to provide a clear definition of the questions examining the relationship between the events. This research will use the questionnaire as the most useful technique to collect the research data. It will be close-ended and will consider the 2 variables of the employee performance and job satisfaction. Data collection will be self-administrated, as questionnaires be distributed to the respondents and collected after they are filled with the respondents’ opinions. The survey will be done in selected large corporations in the USA and employees will fill the questionnaires at the workplace.

Ethical Issues

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