The Importance of Promoting Employee Satisfaction in the Workplace

AP Seminar IWA
March 2023
Word Count: 2055
 According to a Pew Research Center study on employee satisfaction in the workforce,

only 49% of American employees are happy with their jobs, and a similar pattern is reflected in

their satisfaction with their family lives (Pew Research, 12). Recently, work satisfaction has

declined considerably in a post-pandemic world, and people often lack the motivation to return

to work. Wreaking havoc on productivity and the workplace environment, employee

dissatisfaction is a problem that has plagued our society for decades, and now that a large portion

of the workforce is aging into retirement, the US finds itself in a labor shortage. According to a

statement on the subject from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, about 3.5 million

workers are “missing” from the workforce. The root cause of this issue is something that we

have come to refer to as “The Great Resignation”. Better known as the “Big Quit” or the “Great

Reshuffle”, this sudden surge in voluntary en masse resignation by employees, most notably in

the fields of hospitality, healthcare, and education. The rate of these resignations has created an

enormous shortage of experienced workers, and created a vacuum of sorts, attracting new

laborers who lack experience or training. Journalist Greg Iacurci pointed out in an article for

CNBC that “...workers have been quitting their jobs at a near record pace. About 4.3 million

people voluntarily left their jobs in May, about the same as in the previous month and down only

slightly from their peak of more than 4.4 million in March” (Iacurci 4). The effects of this mass

resignation were similar to those of a general strike, and the most cited reasons for people

quitting were wage stagnation, limited opportunities for advancement, hostile work

environments, lack of benefits, and of course, chronic job dissatisfaction. In other words, our

economy experienced this sudden Great Reshuffling because we as employers have failed to

provide a fair, safe, and satisfying employment environment to the workers of the world. After

examining the issue from both social and scientific perspectives, the best way to promote job
satisfaction is through a two-pronged approach. Firstly, employees need to be respected by their

employers, who need to follow the guidelines of the psychological contract. Secondly, and

equally important, employees need to resist the urge to appear “resilient” by sticking with a job

they don’t enjoy, and instead see work as more than something that exists only to pay the bills.

Looking at the issue from a psychological perspective, it is important to look at the

different types of relationships we enter into as human beings. The relationship between

employees and employers is not that different from a relationship between a parent and a child,

or one between two peers. In any relationship between human beings, the foundation is crucial

and must be based upon mutual trust, respect, and understanding. In the case of employee/boss

relationships, this balance is maintained through the psychological contract. This psychological

contract is described well in an article from CharlieHR. It refers to it as an “unwritten, intangible

agreement between an employee and their employer that describes the informal commitments,

expectations and understandings that make up their relationship” (Enright 1). In any relationship,

we will only feel fulfilled and valued if both sides commit to the relationship and each side

receives something in return. Boiling it down, both parties need to feel that they are being treated

fairly, and that is ensured by adherence to the psychological contract. All of this stems from the

psychological state of accepting vulnerability that we know as “trust”. Trust is incredibly

important in a workplace environment since trust forms the basis on which employees can come

to work every day feeling secure and that their work will be rewarded appropriately and fairly.

According to a study conducted by Janet Jones, a DBA at Wayland Baptist University,

“Organizational trust had a positive relationship with psychological fulfillment/violation

(employee obligations); organizational trust had a positive relationship with job satisfaction; job

satisfaction had a positive relationship with psychological contract fulfillment/violation

(employee obligations)” (Jones 5). Put simply, when an organization makes a commitment to

making employees feel secure and satisfied in their workplace, productivity, and fulfillment of

employee obligations will inevitably increase. People are much more likely to do their job

correctly if they feel motivated and valued. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the

banking sector. In a study conducted by Frontiers in Psychology of nearly 500 financial sector

employees, the effect of happiness at work and having tenure on employee productivity levels

(cross-selling performance, in this case) was tested. The results indicated that “HAW is found to

have a significant impact on cross-selling performance (β = 0.396, p < 0.001)” (Vallina et. al, 4).

To summarize their findings, employees that were happier with their work performed

significantly better than those who were dissatisfied. The psychological contract is known to

increase workplace satisfaction, and workplace satisfaction is directly related to employee

productivity, therefore the implementation of the psychological contract will have a positive

impact on addressing the problem behind the Great Resignation. In order to do this, employers

must fulfill the most important tenets of this contract: fairness, support, security, and the

opportunity to advance. When they fail to do so, the effects are very clear, with job

dissatisfaction contributing directly to issues with mental health. According to an article from

Medical News Today, “People in the consistently low satisfaction group reported much higher

levels of depression, sleep problems, and excessive worry, as well as scoring lower on mental

health measures” (Nichols, 2). Looking at the adverse psychological effects of job

dissatisfaction, it is difficult to be happy in your life outside of work if you are facing depression

or anxiety. Given that job dissatisfaction directly causes these negative effects, we should be

taking immediate action to remedy them, or at least do something to try and help people feel

more satisfied with their work.

 Looking at the issue from a social and cultural perspective, it is important to look at all

the different root causes of job dissatisfaction that stem from workplace relationships, and the

way we see jobs as a society. Some of the causes of job dissatisfaction are a feeling of

helplessness to address workplace issues, a negative perception of the job as necessary to

maintain life, and a desire to persist in the job despite being unhappy there. The psychological

contract (fulfilled in its entirety) would aid in preventing or at least prevent the worsening of

many of these struggles faced by employees. One of the elements of that contract that must be

protected is security, and as of late, job security has come under fire as companies have begun to

resist and deliberately oppose the unionization of their employees. This leads to the first struggle

employees face: the inability to address workplace issues. According to an article from

ScienceOpen discussing union membership in Britain, “By 2012, only 26% of workers were

members of a union and just 23% of workers were covered by collective bargaining. This decline

has been shaped by trade union laws which inhibit trade union recruitment, activity, and

collective bargaining, as well as by attacks on trade union activities by politicians, and

misrepresentation in the media” (Hayes et. al, 119). Considering that trade unions are one of the

few methods employees have at their disposal to bargain with employers on a large scale and

solve problems in their workplace, it is very troubling to see such low participation and the

highly destructive impact of media misrepresentation of union goals and attacks on them by

companies and politicians. One major case of this was with Amazon, which intentionally

prevented unionization by their employees. According to a CNBC article on the subject,

“Amazon has managed to keep unions out of its ranks since the company’s founding in 1994…

sought staffing and funds to buy software to better analyze data on unions” (Palmer 4). Amazon

has long been employing tactics such as posters, videos, and frequent meetings to discourage
unionization, and even suspiciously firing employees that sought to unionize or voted yes on

unionization initiatives. By limiting employee’s abilities to band together and strive to improve

their work experience, Amazon has actively contributed to the widespread job dissatisfaction we

are expierencing today as a society, and they’re just one example. The second problem that

employees often encounter that contributes to job dissatisfaction is actually one of their own

creation. Many employees have the tendency to look at work as a necessary evil, something they

do to get by. According to a Pew Research Study, 55% of workers in the private company sector

see work as nothing more than something they do to get by, rather than something that makes

them happy or gives them any sense of satisfaction or identity (Pew Research 7). This is

especially true in young adults, who typically see their jobs as a stepping stone to a future career,

with only 26% of workers ages 18-29 seeing their work as a legitimate career they have the

desire to pursue. Generally speaking, people are often looking for something new, rather than

simply being satisfied with the job they have. As a society, we are much less likely to settle down

and stick with a job now than we were just a few years ago. In the post-pandemic world, the

rules have changed, and the labor shortage has created an opportunity for unskilled workers to

get jobs where other workers have resigned out of frustration with their situation. But maybe this

is a good thing for the workforce. After all, if we as human beings stick with something for too

long, we will almost certainly become bored with it. That’s why we as a society need to have

trends, news, and entertainment to keep us busy. In an article titled “The Dark Side of

Resilience”, the authors wrote “too much resilience could make people overly tolerant of

adversity. At work, this can translate into putting up with boring or demoralizing jobs — and

particularly bad bosses — for longer than needed. In America, 75% of employees consider their

direct line manager the worst part of their job” (Chamorro-Premuzic et. al, 3). This pretty
effectively sums up the revolution our economy has begun to undergo lately since workers no

longer feel the need to stay in the same job their whole lives. This explains the Great Resignation

since if workers feel dissatisfied with their work, they do something about it and switch to a

more desirable and productive work environment. Therefore the struggle to retain employees

becomes the central focus of an employer or organization, and the psychological contract

suddenly becomes much more reasonable and appealing now that the power lies in the hands of

the workforce. We’ve seen what happens when employers don’t respect their employees and

work to make them happy in their work environment, and it's time we did something to remedy

the situation or face the consequences of another Great Resignation.

The Psychological Contract is the single most important agreement between employees

and employers, setting the tone for the relationship they will enter into when the employee walks

in on their first day of work. By implementing the Psychological Contract, employers should

quickly begin to see happier employees, and ideally, a higher employee retention rate will

accompany this shift. On the other hand, employees should still leave the workplace if they no

longer feel satisfied with their work or feel that the job no longer makes them feel valued and

appreciated. By doing this, they are going against the urge to appear resilient, which will benefit

their mental health in the long run. In the process, they are also opening up a new spot for the

new workers that are seeking jobs in the hectic market we now live in. When the Great

Resignation began, we were all shocked by the widespread dissatisfaction despite having done

very little to help employees feel satisfied and even actively oppressing them in cases like forced

disunionization. As a society, we have to accept the new world we’ve entered, and begin

adapting to make work something more than just a necessary task to get by in life. How else can

we expect our employees to keep coming back for the rest of their lives?
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