Engaged and Satisfied Employees Raise Organizational Performance

Satisfied employees have developed strong social relationships with their leaders and the organization. They understand and communicate well with their supervisors and have a personal connection to them on an interpersonal level. Through these positive relationships employees will feel positive affectivity toward their employer which leads to higher levels of performance. When employees enjoy their work and their working relationships they have developed higher levels of organizational commitment, enhanced motivation, and are less likely to leave an organization.

Relationships between employee satisfaction and communication are often related to how employees feel toward their job and other employees. Job satisfaction is associated with higher levels of commitment and lower turnover intentions (Yucel, 2012). Employees who feel the organization provides significant meaning to their lives and are satisfied with their employment opportunities have more commitment than those who don’t.

Naturally, people want to enjoy the work they engage in and the people they talk to on a daily basis. When they do feel a positive association to the organization and its members they naturally will desire to put forward more effort based in the positive affectivity and a sense of loyalty to their social group members. It is often these social relationships that make all the difference in successful and unsuccessful companies.

Employment satisfaction doesn’t exist in a bottle. It often comes with other concepts that include leadership, engagement, and ethical standards (Munir, et. al., 2013). Engagement can be seen as moving above and beyond the requirements of one’s position to fulfill additional responsibilities. Ethical standards become a medium of activity, leadership prompts the behavior, and engagement determines the pathway for benefits.

It is hard to connect with the organization is there is not some level of ethical medium that applies to all members equally. When employees are unsure of how relationships within the organization impact their employment opportunities because ethical standards are lower they will be more cautious about who they talk to and what they talk about. When employees stop relating to each other or their management team the result will be lower satisfaction, lower motivation, and even lower performance.

Job satisfaction is also influenced by the relationships between leaders and followers. According to Han and Jakel job satisfaction had a mediating relationship between leader-member exchange and turnover (2011). The more leaders and managers talked with and engaged their employees the higher the job satisfaction and the lower the turnover rates. 

Great bosses are not only liked but also respected. They don’t need to be the employee’s best friend but they should have positive relationships that allow for openness of communication. They should also be seen as ethical, fair, and trustworthy. Employees will still engage with bosses that have high standards as long as they trust the judgment of that boss and have a personal connection to him or her. 

Developing employee satisfaction has multiple benefits for an organization that includes reduced costs, higher levels of performance, and a stronger commitment to organizational success. This satisfaction is influenced by the nature of employee’s relationships, perceptions of ethical and fair treatment, engagement with the leadership team and the way in which employees make meaning of their place within the group. 

Tips for Managers:

-Have a positive disposition when talking with employees.

-Develop strong ethical and moral norms within the organization.

-Encourage openness with employees.

-Raise expectations and performance ideals.

-Encourage and praise positive performance that goes beyond requirements.

-Help employees understand the importance of their job.

-Offer opportunities for growth.

Han, G. & Jekel, M. (2011). The mediating role of job satisfaction between leader-member exchange and turnover intentions. Journal of Nursing Management, 19 (1). 

Munir, et. al. (2013). Empirical investigation of ethical leadership, job turnover, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior. Far East Journal of Psychology & Business, 10 (2).  

Yucel, I. (2012). Examining the relationships among job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention: an empirical study. International Journal of Business & Management, 7 (2).

Do Abusive Managers Destroy Employee Creative Motivation?

Employees often complain about the personal impact of abusive behavior by management and how this impacts their daily productivity. New research helps highlight how abusive behavior can impact creativity in the workplace and lower the ability of employees to contribute to problem solving within an organization. Understanding how abusive mindsets are contagious in the workplace is important for understanding how to develop workplaces that push for higher levels of employee performance.

The skill of leadership is important in businesses that seek to overcome their next market challenge and make their way to the top. Transformational leadership is positively associated with creative performance (Shin & Zhou, 2003). Leaders who inspire and give a proper path are more pragmatic in their performances and therefore lead to higher levels of employee creative contributions.

The reason why leadership can have such an impact on organizations is because of the way they perceive their employees. Those leaders who label additional effort by employees as citizenship behavior versus ingratiation view and reward their employees at a higher level (Eastman, 1994).  Leaders and managers create precisely the type of behaviors they view their employee with. A leader or manager who perceives employees as lazy, unproductive, and ignorant are likely to create employees who mimic this behavior.

If the very leaders on the top view employees in such a negative way the belief system will pass down through the layers of managers and impact how employees behave and view themselves. Findings help highlight how there is a cascading effect of leadership whereby middle-level managers are a pivotal psychological link between leaders and frontline workers (Zohar & Luria, 2005). The mannerisms and perceptions of leadership filters throughout the entire organization and management is the connecting point of passing these perceptions onto employees to prime behavioral expectations.

When these expectations are in a negative light the overall performance of employees is damaged. Particularly their willingness to engage in and solve problems is hampered and this lowers future growth prospects of the firm. Creativity is about free thinking, problem solving, and sharing those perspectives with others to create new economic realities. Employees have no incentive to do this if their ideas are automatically discounted due to poor management perception.

Research by Liu, Liao & Loi (2012) was conducted in a large Midwestern automobile company and had 22 departments, 108 teams and 762 employees participate in the study. The study attempted to determine the impact of abusive leadership and abusive management on worker creativity. It also analyzed the concept of cascading layers of management and how this impacts performance expectations and transference of beliefs.

Results:

-Abusive supervision by top management creates likelihood that middle level managers will also be more abusive and this damages creativity. 

-How employees perceive the reasons (two perceptions) for this abuse can either exacerbate or mitigate its effectiveness.

-Departmental leadership abusive behavior has an impact on team leader behaviors (cascading layers of management) which impacts team member behavior.

Analysis: 

The report supports attribution theory that indicates that employee characteristics and team leader characteristics interact and influence the environment. Furthermore, the research also supports social learning theory by indicating that group behaviors and organizational culture are formed by these unique attributes. Employees learn to accept their station in life or resist against such poor treatment. To change poor behavior within an organization is to ensure you have a leader with transformational skills, proper management training, and strong employee attributes.

Eastman, K. (1994). In the eyes of the beholder: an attributional approach to ingratiation and organizational citizenship behavior. Academy of Management, 37: 1379-1391

Liu, D., Liao, H. & Loi, R. (2012). The dark side of leadership: a three-level of investigation of cascading effective of abusive supervision on employee creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 55 (5). 

Shin, S. & Zhou, J. (2003). Transformational leadership, conservation, and creativity: Evidence from Korea.  Academy af Management Journal, 46: 703-714.

Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2005). A multilevel model of safety climate: Gross-level relationships between organization and group-level climates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90: 616-628.