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July 1, 2010

Wasting Time and Hating the Job

By Kennedy Maize

Job Satisfaction Suffering

Which leads to The Conference Board report. This venerable business organization in a study last January surveyed 5,000 U.S. households, finding that "only 45 percent of those surveyed say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1 percent in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted."

The drop in job satisfaction over the past dozen years, says the report, "covers all categories in the survey, from interest in work (down 18.9 percentage points) to job security (down 17.5 percentage points) and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality, and extrinsic rewards." The survey results are summarized in the figure.


U.S. worker job satisfaction has declined. Source: The Conference Board



Is this growing job dissatisfaction just a function of today's dicey job market? Not so, says The Conference Board's Lynn Franco, "While one in 10 Americans is now unemployed, their working compatriots of all ages and incomes continue to grow increasingly unhappy. Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend."

Could Wasted Time Correlate with Job Dissatisfaction?

Here's where the Celerant and Conference Board work appears to me to be coming together. Says The Conference Board's John Gibbons, "Challenging and meaningful work is vitally important to engaging American workers. Widespread job dissatisfaction negatively affects employee behavior and retention, which can impact enterprise-level success."

Notes Celebrant: "loosely defined roles, undefined expectations, and ineffective practices create a chaotic and frustrating daily work experience with a great deal of lost time. Implementing a simple architecture with clear accountabilities is the first step in breaking this cycle, and each new role must be aligned with measurable expectations and supported with the tools necessary to achieve them."

In my experience, workers are smart and see what is going on around them. They generally want to contribute to the success of the enterprise and want to see where they are adding value to the company's outputs. When they sense they are spending time on worthless activities, they may tend to view their jobs as worthless.

Celerant's Marciniak largely agrees. "I hear managers repeatedly say, 'people are our most important resource.' But if the most important resource is only adding value 50% of the time, that's a problem. If that was a raw material, the firm would not be in business very long. There is a disconnect between the statement and the behavior. When people are adding value, they will be more satisfied" with their jobs.

—Kennedy Maize is MANAGING POWER's executive editor.