Job Satisfaction is it getting better?

What is the latest greatest on the status of job satisfaction in the working world as we focus on a new year? There continues to be on-going questions and studies on the subject. Clearly job satisfaction means differ things to differ people. What some may consider essential to job satisfaction could be deemed totally unimportant to others. However, there are measurable attributes that many would consider to be at a minimum critical to enjoying their place of employment. Job satisfaction attributes that you consider to be important may not be equally crucial for somebody else. However, the following are some of the attributes you should consider when doing a self assessment.

• Do you enjoy what you do for a living
• Are you making what you consider to be competitive salary with opportunities for promotion/increase
• Do you enjoy your place of work and amount of balance it provides for other life goals
• Do you feel you are recognized and rewarded appropriately
• Do you enjoy the people you work with and for
• Do you feel your commute is reasonable

Job dissatisfaction usually is visible in one or several of the above areas resulting in excessive stress, lack of desire to go to work, impact to performance resulting in higher than acceptable loss work days due to illness, boredom, lack of energy and drive. These potential performance implication drive employers to spending time and money to determine what improves job satisfaction and what steps can be taken to leverage it to ultimately improve the performance of their employees.

Job Satisfaction: Satisfied With Your Job?

What are leading employee satisfaction surveys saying about job satisfaction for the year 2010 that only about 45% Americans are satisfied with their jobs and nearly 64% people under 25 years of age are not interested in their work! Probably, these statistics may be scary but the matter of fact is that this data is holistic and dependent on several factors. These are some pretty high numbers consider the population of the workforce and the need for on-going performance improvement in the marketplace to maintain a competitive position. While a number of the factors are understood it doesn’t change the fact that a high percentage of people get up every morning to a job the are not happy with but don’t feel they have an alternative to making a living. This reflects a society that on any given day makes an effort to do their best under less than optimal circumstances. The point is that realistically we may not all being able to find and obtain that perfect fit but it is up to us to make the best of what we do find if it helps us to meet our needs. In sports I believe the term is push through it and give it your very best because who knows it may be just a stepping stone to one day doing the thing you love.