On job satisfaction

Just in the last week I’ve had a few people tell me about how dissatisfied they are because they’re working in a big corporation and a few others have told me that they are dissatisfied because they’re working in a small business. There are plenty of things that can make you dissatisfied at work or about work, but it got me thinking a bit about whether the size of a company really does influence our general satisfaction levels and mood. Industrial and organizational psychologists will tell us that, yes, it can and there are some people who will thrive in one industry model and others in an alternative one. Anecdotally, I can attest to that statement based on the people I’ve met at work either as patients or colleagues. I can also tell you my own personal experiences.

What’s the good thing about working about for a big company? As an employee, the budget seems endless. You need what you need to do your job and you can access it reasonably easy. What’s the bad thing about it? If you need things other than those that relate to your job, especially that stuff of being human (e.g. holidays, time to recuperate from illness, or even just to be given a little slack when your personal life isn’t going so well), it is hard for a corporate machine to accommodate. Most companies will have a policy, but unfortunately that policy also tends to be quite strict. For example, bereavement leave may be just 2 days and turns out you may not be a human being that can get back to being your old productive self after the death of your parent after just 2 days. Then there’s also usually a hierarchy and a certain type of anonymity amongst very many employees. Yet both of those things can be positives: the hierarchy can give you motivation to progress; and the anonymity can afford you the space to work with less interruption. On the other hand, the hierarchy can lead to frustration when someone very distant from the sphere you work in makes decisions that affect you at your level without the direct knowledge of what things are like there. There is no perfect big company, and most try very hard to be, but there’s no escaping the fact that we are all human first and workers second.

Is small business, then, the answer to overcoming that barrier between being a worker and also being human? I don’t believe so either. The positives boasted about it are a much smaller hierarchy, often having direct communication with the big-decision makers, and much greater flexibility in work because you can discuss it directly with another human being. Then what’s so bad about it? Been wary of the much smaller budget at all times, and more human-human interaction and therefore greater possibility for human conflict with other workers.

Is there a perfect system? No, and there probably never will be a model that is right for everyone. As an employee all you can do is try to find that model that is best suited to your interpersonal and working style (and tools like the Myers-Briggs questionnaire can help).

In the last few months I’ve come to realize certain things about myself, and certain things about industry - and yet this is unfortunately knowledge that I have only gained through experience. I’ve noted that the greatest teams, the most successful companies, the greatest productivity out of a group of people is achieved when every member of that team feels useful, appreciated, and proud of achieving. In a working environment the reward for achievement is money: our salaries. Even a person who is not someone you’d call material and superficial engages in paid employment for exactly the reason of getting paid; after all, money pays for our daily necessities of life. One thing I’ve noted is that the more a person is paid, the more aware they become of the emphasis his company has for his role – in turn he becomes aware of his responsibility to represent his company in the best light he can. Pride. Pride in our work and feeling useful: tick. And if you feel a person does a good job, isn’t paying them their worth a good way to show your appreciation? I’ve also noted that when an employee stops feeling appreciated in his workplace, despite acknowledging his usefulness, he cannot maintain his pride and enthusiasm. I’ve seen it too often. And, I have to confess, I’ve felt it too.