Employee satisfaction is directly linked to their levels of motivation, performance, and productivity. At DrainFlow, the adverse implications of an unhappy workforce are manifested in their failure to accomplish various key objectives and the poor services rendered to customers. For instance, clients have complained about the prolonged response time and the dispatch of workers who could not fix their problem, indicating employees’ unhappiness and dissatisfaction. As a result, DrainFlow has been losing its customers to rival firms, including Lightning Plumber, where the work environment is enthusiastic and energized (Robbins & Judge, 2016).
Additionally, the personnel are reluctant to interact with their clients, have strained relations with coworkers, and lack the essential personality and skills to provide customer service since they view their work as mechanical or technical. As a result, the performance and productivity of the employees are adversely affected. Therefore, the workers’ dissatisfaction with their assignment at DrainFlow is a major reason for concern.
Further, employee satisfaction impacts other aspects and behavioral outcomes of their work, including organizational citizenship behavior, positive attitude, commitment to their job, and harmonious interrelations. Günay (2018) contends that job satisfaction is intrinsically associated with organizational citizenship behavior. In this regard, fulfilled workers manifest considerable interest in their engagement and strive to achieve the firm’s objectives creatively and collaboratively, effectively becoming more productive and better at their jobs (Salas-Vallina, Pozo-Hidalgo, & Gil-Monte, 2020). Therefore, enhancing job satisfaction at DrainFlow will ultimately motivate the workers and improve their performance.
Currently, DrainFlow’s job design and configuration are contributing to employees’ dissatisfaction. Although the implementation of specialization was designed to eliminate costs by splitting tasks, it has led to the progressive entrenchment of boredom, loss of fulfillment, and declining job satisfaction. For instance, the plumbers view their engagement as purely mechanical or technical and lack the motivation to participate in other operational issues, such as interacting with customers (Robbins & Judge, 2016).
Routinely repetitive tasks, jobs that are not relationally designed, rigid schedules, and challenges in the evaluation of non-quantitative performance at DrainFlow have adversely affected employees’ motivation. This is the main reason the workers at DrainFlow feel dissatisfied with their jobs. Therefore, it is imperative for the organization to reconfigure its tasks to make the work environment energetic and interesting.
Redesigning the jobs at DrainFlow is integral in stimulating employee satisfaction and ensuring and increasing their motivation levels. Enhancing the interdependency of tasks, rotating employees, providing flexible schedules, and ensuring that the jobs are pro-socially designed can promote satisfaction at the workplace (Daniels, Gedikli, Watson, Semkina, & Vaughn, 2017). For instance, the rotation would ensure that workers are not trapped in repetitive tasks and would help employees to comprehensively understand their input at the workplace. DrainFlow should structure the duties to integrate prosocial design, participative decision-making, and job-sharing as innovative approaches to motivate employees.
A properly developed cash reward policy would play a critical role in stimulating the employees’ job satisfaction, productivity, and efficiency. Reynaldo’s proposal recognizes the challenges of measuring peoples’ levels of happiness and pegs the awards on 20 successfully completed calls (Robbins & Judge, 2016). This incentive mechanism can be enhanced by implementing a skill-based reward scheme pegged on the variety of technical knowledge an employee possesses. Additionally, the reward system should be flexible to allow each worker to choose their compensation package depending on their current situation and needs. These strategies are effective since they promote flexibility, interdependency, collaboration, and cooperation towards accomplishing organizational objectives.
Rewarding tangible results, such as the successfully completed calls or contracts, recognizing employees’ skills set, can help to improve motivation and promote flexibility at DrainFlow. For instance, Reynaldo can incentivize and reward plumbers who speak directly with clients and engage the office staff to resolve the order processing and billing issues before the customers raise complaints. Additionally, she can recognize and award individuals who adopt a collaborative and cooperative strategy to meet customers’ needs from the initial call to the issuance of accurate bills. These approaches can enhance the effectiveness of the reward system since they recognize even the immeasurable aspects of the job and are highly individual in nature.
References
Daniels, K., Gedikli, C., Watson, D., Sekina, A., & Vaughn, O. (2017). Job design, employment practices, and well-being: A systematic review of intervention studies. Ergonomics, 60(9), 1177–1196. Web.
Günay, G. Y. (2018). Relationship between job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and employee performance: Sample of Edirne financial office employees in Turkey. American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 8(1), 64–74.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2016). Organizational behavior (17th ed.). London, England: Pearson.
Salas-Vallina, A., Pozo-Hidalgo, M., & Gil-Monte, P. R. (2020). Are happy workers more productive? The mediating role of service-skill use. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 456. Web.
