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Job Satisfaction in the UK is on the increase, according to a survey just released by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 46% of people feel satisfied with their job, exactly the same percentage as in the Career Energy Job Satisfaction Survey that we published last February. But the very fact that society is interested in the number of people who are happy at work is a matter of concern. It is this that we should focus on, rather than whether percentages are rising or not.

What would we say if we were considering the result of a marriage satisfaction survey, and we found that more people were happily married this year than last? Very nice, we might say, but nevertheless isn’t a happy marriage something that we are all entitled to aspire to? Our concern should not be to distract ourselves by simply measuring the number of happily married people; it is, or at least it should be, to look at each unhappily married person and to do something to help them? It is not the trend that should concern us but the human emotions that underpin it.

And it is the same with job satisfaction. The increase from 46% to 26% over three years may be  the result of more cautious expectations due to the recession – people are less willing to admit to unhappiness at work in case they force themselves into a stagnant labour market. Or it may be because companies are trying harder to engage their employees. But no matter what the cause, by treating job satisfaction as a social barometer we risk taking the next step and applying targets to it; of aiming to get the job satisfaction rate up to a certain level.

But it shouldn’t be about that. A succesful, prosperous and emotionally healthy society does not come about as a result of surveys and statistics. It comes about, inter alia, by dealing positively on a personal level with the enormous emotional hardship of each and every individual who is unhappy in their primary economic activity.

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Tags: Career Adice, Career Change, Career Consultants, Career Energy, Career Planning, CIPD, Job Change, job satisfaction, Job Satisfaction Survey, Labour Market

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 3:37 am and is filed under Career Advice, Career Change, Career Consultant, Career Energy, Career Planning, Getting A New Job, Uncategorized, Workplace Dilemmas . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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