Band 6+: As most people spend a major part of their adult life at work, job satisfaction is an important element of individual wellbeing.What factors contribute to job satisfaction? How realistic is the expectation of job satisfaction for all workers?Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Jobs consume a great amount of our daily lives. As a matter of fact, workplaces are the second most visited place after our homes. For that reason, they have a major effect on our psychological state, and being either satisfied or dissatisfied with one’s job can reflect on one’s state of mind. Employees around the world seek workplaces that provide the satisfaction that helps them maintain a healthy mindset, but the factors that make a job satisfying differ from one employee to the other.

For some employees, content towards a job comes from fulfilling financial needs. This group of people find that money facilitates their lives, as it allows them to live well, eat well and buy most of the things they desire. In return, this financial freedom reflects positively on their wellbeing since they feel financially stress free, and the amount of effort put into the job feels worth it, making them satisfied employees. A recent UK study found that half of the British employees feel discontent with their jobs solely because of their low income.

As they say “money does not buy happiness”, so it is not the only factor that produces employee satisfaction towards a job. Another factor that plays a role is status and recognition, as a great number of employees feel more comfortable and happy with a job, if their efforts are sentimentally rewarded and recognized. For example, some companies choose an employee of the month on a monthly basis, when an employee is recognized for being diligent and putting in extra effort, he or she automatically feels better about themselves and percieve their job with a positive outlook.

A workplace where all employees are satisfied sounds like something from a fairy tale. In reality, the factors mentioned are relative and change from one employee to another, so a paycheck of 2000 dollars monthly can satisfy one employee but not the other, becuase they might percieve this as a low salary compared to their ambition. Similarly this occurs with the type of recognition each employee desires. So in summary, stisfaction of all employees is far from reality.