ARCO Alumni

Forty five percent of people say they are satisfied in what they do, a 20% drop from two decades ago.  What is your personal job satisfaction or if you are in HR, how does your company rate?  Take our poll or leave us feedback on our LinkedIn ARCO alumni group.

An article from the Associated Press states that the drop in workers’ happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades.

“It is not about the business cycle or one grumpy generation,” says Linda Barrington, Managing Director of Human Capital at the Conference Board. Workers have grown steadily more unhappy for a variety of reasons:

• Fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting.
• Incomes have not kept up with inflation.
• The soaring cost of health insurance has eaten into workers’ take-home pay.

When the Conference Board’s first survey was conducted in 1987, most workers - 61 percent - said they were happy in their jobs. The survey of 5,000 households was conducted for the Conference Board by TNS, a global market research company.

Another clue that may explain workers’ growing dissatisfaction: Only 51 percent now find their jobs interesting - another low in the survey’s 22 years. In 1987, nearly 70 percent said they were interested in their work.

Some other key findings of the survey included:

• Forty-three percent of workers feel secure in their jobs. In 2008, 47 percent said they feel secure in their jobs, while 59 percent felt that way in 1987.
• Fifty-six percent say they like their co-workers, slightly less than the 57 percent who said so last year but down from 68 percent in 1987.
• Fifty-six percent say they are satisfied with their commute to work even as commute times have grown longer over the years. That compares with 54 percent in 2008 and 63 percent in 1987.

However the responsibility also lies with workers who need to figure out what they should be doing to be the most engaged in their jobs and the most productive.

Job dissatisfaction is also echoed in the UK, a paper by the MPRA (munich personal RePEc archive), Dickey et al 2009 states that The North Sea oil and gas industry currently faces recruitment and retention difficulties due to a shortage of skilled workers. The vital contribution of this sector to the UK economy means that it is crucial for companies to focus on retaining existing employees; one way of doing this is to improve job satisfaction of workers.

The paper found that respondents to its questionnaire in good financial situations, those with skills closely related to their job and those who received training reported higher levels of satisfaction with their job. The paper concludes that to encourage better retention companies should seek to adopt policies that focus not only on pay but also provide promotion and training opportunities aimed at investing in their employees' skill development.

Watch the video about job satisfaction.