by Dave Gannon, on Feb 13, 2018 2:36:38 PM
"The thing that makes us love our jobs is not the work that we're doing, it's the way we feel when we go there. We feel safe, protected; we feel that someone wants us to achieve more and is giving us the opportunity to prove to them and to ourselves that we can do that" (Simon Sinek, cited in Chapman, 2015).
Yet, despite the optimistic viewpoint expressed above about what our working experience should be, many people find a very different experience. According to the CIPD (2015a, p. 5), when questioning employees about their desire to change their workplace, one fifth indicated that they were looking for alternative employment, with fifty-four percent of those indicating it was to look for increased job satisfaction. This is a situation which is rather odd, as if we recognise that as above it is often the experience of work rather than the work itself which gives job satisfaction; it seems that organisations are perhaps making mistakes or errors in their handling of employees and creation of company culture. Another CIPD report, this one look- ing into workplace conflict (CIPD, 2015c, p. 19), adds that "what is at stake is not only the technical aspects of employment contracts, but the wider psychological contract that underpins the employment relation- ship" when examining the causes for workplace conflict. If employees feel that the 'psychological contract' is broken, then de-motivation is often the main outcome, which can of course lead to lower productivity and even to the loss of the employee.
Surprisingly, despite a great deal of literature devoted to this subject, organisations continue to make mis- takes in their approach to employees. Perhaps one of the most appropriate for discussion of this situation is Frederick Herzberg's Two Factor Theory, especially his discussion of hygiene factors, which can lead to dissat- isfaction if ill-considered or ignored, resulting in the removal of the opportunity for motivation to happen, no matter the practice or offer by the organisation. This article will examine this issue and then add in a further factor which is not always overtly discussed, not just the actual dissatisfaction which may exist in the work- place, but also the 'perceived' dissatisfaction which exists, whether it is based on a reality or not. This article will argue that if both causes for dissatisfaction are addressed, both real and perceived, then the organisation has a better chance of engaging its employees, removing dissatisfaction, and being in a place to motivate them and providing them with something which resembles the experience as described by Sinek above.
