Millennials and job satisfaction

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).