Job Satisfaction Is Key To Business Success
All businesses understand the importance of employee retention. Each employee is an investment, both in terms of time and money. And the return on investment is very good, so long as that employee stays with the company. This means that employers also have to ensure their staff have good job satisfaction, meaning they are less likely to jump ship.
There are a number of well-documented methods of increasing job satisfaction, such as paying a good salary, allowing for sufficient time off and a range of bonuses and other incentives. However, measuring job satisfaction and the effectiveness of the various methods that are implemented can be somewhat more complicated.
Measuring Job Satisfaction
In most cases, job satisfaction is measured through the process of self-reporting. This is done through questionnaires that have various scales. A range of different measures have been developed recently, and there is quite a lot of variation between these. Some have a stronger focus on cognitive job satisfaction, for instance, whereas others look at effective job satisfaction. Furthermore, there are big differences between the psychometric validations of the various tests. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular tests used today.
The DiSC Model of Human Behavior, one of the most widely used, scientifically-based approaches to assessing personality and improving interpersonal skills has been used by more than a million people each and every year to increase their life satisfaction and effectiveness. They are powerful tools that are easy to understand and simplify the complexity of human behavior, an interest that has remained strong from early recorded history to the present day.
Since they were first developed in the early 1970s, DiSC Profiles have evolved through three generations.
- The DiSC Classic in Booklet Format, which describes a person’s behavior in a line-graph format, is the first generation.
- The second generation is the Online DiSC Classic.
- The third generation is Everything DiSC which measures application-specific priorities for leadership, sales, management and workplace development and presents the person’s style in a circular map.
Everything DiSC is 32% more accurate than DiSC Classic; the applications help participants see the relevance of DiSC to their profession and help them understand how DiSC relates to their goals and developmental needs, engage their coworkers in ways that will ensure greater productivity and become more successful at their jobs.
BIAJS (Brief Index of Affective Job Satisfaction)
The BIAJS is a popular measures of satisfaction.
“The BIAJS differs from other job satisfaction measures in being comprehensively validated not just for internal consistency reliability, temporal stability, convergent and criterion-related validities, but also for cross-population invariance by nationality, job level, and job type.” Measuring Job Satisfaction
JDI (Job Descriptive Index)
A second commonly used measure is the JDI, which measures cognitive job satisfaction in particular. This looks at five different aspects that are relevant to all job positions. These are pay and salary, opportunities for promotion and how often these are given, relationships with coworkers, how well supervision is done and what the job itself entails. One of the biggest advantages of the JDI is that it is very easy to answer the various questions, with only three possible answers (yes, no or don’t know). As a result, it is impossible for people to simply choose the middle option, which is often seen on sliding scales.
MSQ (Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire)
The MSQ is available in both long form and short form.
“The MSQ Long Form requires 15 to 20 minutes to complete. The Short Form requires about 5 minutes.”
(MSQ) Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire
Most employers will choose the long form, as it is still reasonably quick to complete, so long as employees are given the time to do them. It looks at a range of different aspects of work (20 scales for the long form and 20 items on short form), and employees have to indicate on a scale of one to five (ranging from very satisfied to very dissatisfied) how they feel about the different aspects. Some of the aspects include things such as achievement, social service, recognition, variety and more.
JSS (Job Satisfaction Survey)
One other popular option is the JSS.
“The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) is a questionnaire used to evaluate nine dimensions of job satisfaction related to overall satisfaction. This instrument is well established among the other job satisfaction scales.”
Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS)
Nine scales are included in the questionnaire, and each scale is measured through four different items. This means respondents have to answer 36 different questions. It is one of the most popular tests because it is reasonably short and has quite high consistency, although not as high as the BIAJS. Each question has a scale of six options, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. However, one of the reasons why the validity may be a little bit lower is because this offers the potential for people to choose the middle option on every question.
About Steve Giles
Co-owner/Co-founder of Intesi! Resources. Educated as an architect I transitioned to technology during my career in architecture. Intesi! Resources was founded in 2004 and my focus is everything Web/eCommerce related from the design and development of our site to all the marketing activities involved. I also provide significant support for our clients on all our products and how they are used to deliver assessment-driven learning solutions that develop self-awareness and interpersonal skills.
