Employee Satisfaction vs. Employee Engagement

While the terms “employee engagement” and “employee satisfaction” could sound style of just like the same factor, they are really quite completely different. Employers should try and ensure their staff are both engaged with their jobs and satisfied with their work. Any organization would like to build a powerful workforce inside the organization, they have to understand the differences between above two terms. worker engagement is something that happens once staff are committed to serving to their firms accomplish all of their goals. Engaged workers are motivated to indicate up to work every day and do everything within their power to assist their company to succeed (Justin, 2016). employee satisfaction is that the state of employee enjoying their job, during this case however not essentially being engaged with it. Imagine the employee who gets to show up to work early and leave late while not contributing a lot of or breaking a sweat (Justin, 2016). Labor productivity, quality and shrinkage all key to operations are also affected positively by time unit strategy, this will be actively achieved through only by engaged employees (Patrick, 2008), while engaged employees are satisfied with their jobs, satisfied workers are not essentially engaged with theirs.

When employees interact with themselves in their work, they enter into an interactive mode comprised of challenges, inspirations, and pride. This interaction mode of their work engagement provides the main contribution to the work satisfaction of those employees. According to Lu, Lu, Gursoy, and Neale (2016), work engagement contains individual dimensions, and job satisfaction is that the outcome of those dimensions. As per Murray et.al, (2015), employees, who are powerfully and completely engaged in their work, and show energy and dedication to their work consequently has satisfaction with their job. Some corporations only care about whether their workers are happy to possess low employee turnover rates. When much of the employee's square measure happy with their jobs, they were content with showing up to the same workplace every day, and that they will not lookout for the next job because they are satisfied (Justin, 2016). As described by Katya (2016), the following are some key factors to stay the presently engaged workers within the organization as a satisfied employee.

1. Career Advancement Opportunities Within Organization.
2. Respectable Compensation & Benefits.
3. Employee Relationships with Management.
4. Pleasant Work Environment.

While satisfied employees may handle their job responsibilities decently, they will never go above and beyond. This is the key differentiation between engaged employees and satisfied workers (Katya,2016).

Meanwhile, Britt, Castro, and Adler (2005) found that employees, who have high level of engagement with their work and the organizations, get negatively affected by negative events and encounter in above points in negatively while working and consequently are affected by work-related stressors will lead to employee dissatisfaction. Caldwell & O’Reilly (1990) argued that uncertainties and organizational pressure forces employees to show how they are involved and committed with work this leads to reduction in job satisfaction, further he elaborates that mismatch between individual preferences and external demands results in lower job satisfaction.

Rayton and Yalabik (2014) conducted a study to explore two links, firstly between Psychological Contract Breach (PCB) and work engagement, and secondly between job satisfaction, and work engagement. The conclusions are drawn wherever job satisfaction mediates the relationship between PCB and work engagement, which indicates that engagement happens once there comes a feeling in staff that the organization meets all their obligations and at the same time staff accomplish job satisfaction.

Many managers erroneously think that employee satisfaction will increase by employee motivation (Charles,2018). American psychologist Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory proposes that individuals are influenced by two factors, those who impact motivation and basic factors that influence job satisfaction. Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, and responsibility. Hygiene factors include pay and benefits, supervision, working conditions, and job security.

Fig. 1 Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory

Source: (Gursoy, & Neale 2016)

According to Herzberg’s motivation theory, Hygiene factors confirm a person’s level of satisfaction with their job and strongly influence employee retention. If they are not met, they result in job dissatisfaction and cause employees to seem for better opportunities elsewhere. However, the addition of more or better hygiene factors over an explicit baseline will not increase job satisfaction or performance. Motivation factors influence how an individual performs on the job. When an employee is motivated, they invest more of themselves in their work and attempt to do higher, simply being satisfied does not cause an employee to work harder. Additionally, an employee is often highly motivated however not satisfied with the job (Charles,2018). they could notice the work interesting and challenging, however if they worry an excessive amount of concerning job security or think they can be paid more at a different company, they will not be satisfied (Caldwell & O’Reilly,1990).

Both factors are key mechanisms of employee engagement and satisfaction, basic hygiene factors must be met to ensure employee satisfaction and retention. On the other hand, the employee also must feel motivated to perform at a high level, Hygiene factors are easier to identify and improve(Charles,2018). According to Katya (2016), motivation factors differ for each employee and are most influenced by the employee’s supervisor, and they need to understand what drives each employee and create the circumstances for them to perform at their best. The organization should identify the employee type X/Y as if X type employees' strict control method should be imposed to keep the employees engaged as if Y type employees will have engaged with loose controls (Rayton &Yalabik, 2014). When employees are engaged, not only they happy to have their jobs, they are always thinking about how their company can be better (Justin, 2016). Satisfied engaged employees not only streamlining business processes but also go brainstorming, introducing a new product, giving coworker helping hand, inventing new service ideas are some of many that they never hesitate to give to the organization (Patrick, 2008).

Based on the discussion had with Mr. Harry Jayawardena, Chairman Aitken Spence Hotel Management (ASHM) in relation to focus, all the employees how to put them, proactively engaged employees. As he stated that consider ASHM as a paddling boat if all in the boat start paddling hard getting to company objective to have south Asia number one hospitality provider   is much more essay, but the boat will sail with 70% been paddling, in this case, to achieve the company objective take longer time and longer efforts. He further says that if only 20% start paddling as the boat will sink the ASHM will also sink very quickly. As Chairman, he has entrusted to the Esoft HR team, ensures that the least boat should be paddled at a 90% effective level. For the above reasons, ASHM, HR should certainly be interested in ensuring their employees are satisfied with the work they are doing, they should be more concerned with measuring and improving employee engagement. In this regarding the following been introduced by ASHM, HR to measure the satisfaction and engagement levels to put all employees focus on 100% paddling.

1. Entitlements:  Employees to know exactly what’s expected of them and what their job responsibilities, for this given job description and job roles, and equipped with the tools and technologies that enable them to do their job well.
2. Contributions: Employees given unintended to speak, people listen and respond, open office concept on Chairman’s, MD’s, CEO’s, CFO’s to approach without any prior appointment for any new contribution factors, engaged employees believe that the work they are doing is valuable to their companies.
3. Growth: In ASHM, engaged employees have adequate opportunities for professional development. In another words, it means that the ability to get promoted or at least interview from a position that carries more responsibility.

Mr. Harry Jayawardena, further illustrated that, when the employees not engaged, by changing the way of operates in slightly ASHM could increase the chances workers become engaged. With that in mind, he said five simple tactics that can use to increase engagement.

1. Recognize your employees’ hard work.
2. Invest in professional development.
3. Giving them opportunity work in other department.
4. Embrace remote working and flexible scheduling.
5. Plan team-building activities regularly.

 Before conclude let’s look at following video clip in relation to employee satisfaction and employee engagement.

 Video 1.0

What's the Difference Between Employee Satisfaction and Employee Engagement?

Source: Decision Wise, 2016

Video 1.0 Charles Rogel, VP of Products & Marketing, Consultant, percent the above video, about the employee satisfaction and employee engagement. He relates to the employee satisfaction to the employee contract how extend of fulfilment. Employee satisfied when basic hygiene factors are met and satisfaction elements should attract new employees and retain existing employees. Further he says that employees should satisfied before they been engaged and five drivers for employee engagement also important to retain employees which will be mostly based on employee performance. As per this video both factors are important and should be balance these to have better employment result.

In conclusion that inherent factors are more responsible for job satisfaction rather than extrinsic factors, other than that not only employee motivation factors, hygiene factors determine a person’s level of satisfaction. The above study founds a positive moderate relationship between job satisfaction, and work engagement. Employee Engagement is connected with harts, sprits, mind and heads which is transformational and employee satisfaction contractual which is transactional. So, the conclusion is the employee job satisfaction leads to better employee engagement; to keep managers working at different hierarchical levels engaged, their job satisfaction should be achieved by providing more intrinsic motivational factors, hygiene factors with the positive psychological contract.

References

Britt, T. W., Castro, C. A., & Adler, A. B. (2005). Self-engagement, stressors, and health: A longitudinal study. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1475-1486.

Caldwell, D. F., & O’Reilly, C. A. (1990). Measuring person–job fit with a profile-comparison process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 648-657.

Charles R. (2018) Employee Satisfaction vs. Employee Engagement in 2018 Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory [online] available at< https://decision-wise.com/job-satisfaction-vs-employee-engagement. > [Accessed on 27th November 2019].

Justin Reynolds, (2016) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION. [online] available at < https:tinypulse.com/blog/employee-engagement-employee-satisfaction-difference.> [Accessed on 29th November 2019].

K. Murray, M., Duncan, N., Pontes, H. M., & Griffiths, M. D. (2015). Organizational identification, work engagement, and job satisfaction. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 30, 1019-1033.

Katya S., (2016) EMPLOYEE JOB SATISFACTION AND ENGAGEMENT. Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), USA, SHRM store.

Lu, L., Lu, A. C. C., Gursoy, D., & Neale, N. R. (2016). Work engagement, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions: A comparison between supervisors and line-level employees. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28, 737-761.

Patrick M. W., 2008 Human Resource Strategy, USA, SHRM Foundation.

Rayton, B. A., & Yalabik, Z. Y. (2014). Work engagement, psychological contract breach and job satisfaction. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25, 2382-2400