Knowledge of the factors which are known to make people happy
at work, I think, is a really important topic for career practitioners. There
are a couple of great meta-analyses which give a good overview of the
personality characteristics and the work factors which have been shown to be
associated with higher levels of job satisfaction. But some of these references
are 5 – 10 years old and I haven’t found anything very much more recent which
paints such a comprehensive a picture of the current set up. I was talking
about this at a conference on Friday and some of the delegates were asking about
the Millennials and wondered if the factors which they wanted from the work
place might be different. I thought this was a great question so have had a bit
of a dig around the literature.
One question is whether this group of workers is actually any
different. Millennials are defined as those born between 1980 and 1995 (also
known as Gen Y). Kowske, Rasch and Wiley (2010) found that this generation does
indeed have different work habits and this seems to make for some culture
clashes in the work place. On the one hand, this group are so tech-savvy. They
are used to communicating via instant messaging and social media and this kind
of communication is responsive and immediate (Cekada, 2012). As well as fast
responses, this group of workers demand more feedback from employers and tend
to change job more often than their predecessors. Other studies (Hershatter and Epstein, 2010)
have shown that this group of workers have actually led quite protected lives
so need extra guidance and support to know how to negotiate and behave in the
work place.
In terms of job satisfaction, there are a lot of
similarities in the literature between the factors which are important to
Millennials and those found in all-age cohorts. Hays (2014) found no difference
in the overall levels of job satisfaction across the ages and the work factors
of autonomy, opportunity to grow and develop, and having meaningful work come
up regularly in both sets of literature (eg Campione, 2014; Lee, Mullins and
Cho, 2016; Roelen et al., 2008; Ruys, 2014,) and Hays (2014) identified the
need to ‘feel connected’ with someone which is akin to the associations with ‘colleagues’
found elsewhere. Lee et al. (2016) looked at what Millennials want in a leader
and found that a transformational leader is more popular than an authoritative
or laissez faire leader. This sounds as though it is similar to previous
findings which show that an attentive manager is the style of manager most
strongly linked with job satisfaction, followed by an authoritative one, and
finally one who pays little attention.
Pay is an interesting one. Lee et al., (2016) and Ruys
(2013), both found that Millenials wanted ‘adequate pay’. An all-age
meta-analysis of the impact of pay (Judge et al. 2010) a very weak correlation between
pay and satisfaction, but it’s hard to know if this is a generational
difference, or if the questions are asked differently (perhaps everyone wants ‘adequate’
pay, but increased pay over and above a certain threshold adds little to overall
job satisfaction?)
I found some contradictory evidence for the impact of hours
worked. Campione, 2014, who examined data from 1000 Millennials in the US found
working more than 50 hours per week was positively correlated with job
satisfaction, whereas Ruys (2014) found that work life balance was important.
Campione also found that being able to work flexibly was important, and this
could provide an explanation to these apparently contradictory piece of
evidence – perhaps Millennials like roles where they work hard, as long as they
can control when and where they work.
Campione also found that working for a smaller organisation,
and having an older line manager (highly positively correlated) and a regular schedule,
pay and sick leave were weakly
correlated with job satisfaction (Campione, 2014).
Overall, I was left thinking that we shouldn’t be making too
much of the differences. For the most part, the important things in work are
consistent. We all want nice colleagues, an attentive line manage who trusts us
to get on with our own work, to feel we are doing something which makes a
difference and to feel that we are growing and developing within our work.
References
Campione,
W. A. (2014). The Influence of Supervisor Race, Gender, Age, and Cohort on
Millennials' Job Satisfaction. The Journal of Business Diversity, 14(1),
18.
Cekada, T.
L. (2012). Training a multigenerational workforce. Professional Safety, 57(3), 40-44.
Hays, D. W. (2014). Examining Differences between Millennial and All
Employee Levels of Job Satisfaction and Importance and Satisfaction with the
Immediate Supervisor Relationship. International Journal of Managerial
Studies and Research, 2(8).
Hershatter,
A., & Epstein, M. (2010). Millennials and the world of work: an
organization and management perspective. Journal
of Business & Psychology, 25(2), 211- 223. doi:10.1007/s10869-
Judge, T.A.,
Piccolo, R.F., Podsakoff, N.P., Shaw, J.C. and Rich, B.L. (2010) The
relationship between pay and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis of the
literature Journal of Vocational Behavior 77, 157 – 167
Kowske, B.,
Rasch, R., & Wiley, J. (2010). Millennials’ (lack of) attitude problem: an
empirical examination of generational effects on work attitudes. Journal of Business & Psychology, 25(2),
265279
Lee,
C. C., Mullins, K., & Cho, Y. S. (2016). FACTORS AFFECTING JOB SATISFACTION
AND RETENTION OF MILLENNIALS. Academy of Organizational Culture,
Communications and Conflict, 6.
Roelen,
C.A.M, Koopmans, P.C. and Groothoff, J.W. (2008) Which work factors determine
job satisfaction Work, 30 433 - 439
Ruys,
J. (2013). Leadership behaviors and workplace factors millennial workers
find important for job satisfaction and retention (Doctoral dissertation,
UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE).
