Chronically Dissatisfied: Work Characteristics, Personal Expectations and Job Satisfaction - Empirical Evidence in Young Italian Workers

Abstract

Job satisfaction is the degree to which people like their jobs. Companies are interested in job satisfaction of their employees, because it is positively correlated with certain desired outcomes and contributes to reduce significantly the rate of absenteeism and job turnover. Job satisfaction needs to be divided into three separate but related components: the overall opinion about the job, affective experience at work, beliefs about the job itself, and can be considered as a global feeling about the job or as a related constellation of attitudes about various aspects or facets of the job. The global approach is used when the overall attitude is of interest, the facet approach is used to find out which parts of job produce satisfaction or dissatisfaction. This article presents and discusses the results of a study carried out using both approaches to get a complete picture of employee job satisfaction on a consistent and significant sample of young workers (less than three years of tenure) belonging to the mechanical sector in a province in the Northeast of Italy. Using an analytical protocol the present study has identified aspects of work related (positively and negatively) to the job satisfaction.