Work Identity, Job Design, and Job Satisfaction are all connected

How well do you really know your employees? Do you know enough about them to be able to honestly say they are satisfied at work? And if you did, do you have any idea if their core makeup aligns with the job you both thought they were doing today?

The way a person views themselves in relation to their work is an ongoing element of organizational research. How an employee connects themselves to work is critical for companies looking to optimize their talent - and it's not always obvious what it takes to make the connection.

When you think about how an employee connects self to work, it’s a safe bet you're relying on observations of external behaviors mostly tied to performance results. If a person is performing, then the behavior associated with successful outcomes is considered to reflect a profile of who the person is (e.g. hard working, diligent, reliable, etc). Does that observation, however, mean people are displaying their true identify in terms of feeling connected to their work?

Identity for the purposes of this discussion refers to a person’s core makeup - their work profile, if you like. A person's work profile is rooted in personality, work style, and social interaction. In work settings, all of these areas compose a work profile that is programmed positively or negatively depending on the person’s job profile, manager, company values, and culture. If organizations don’t connect with an employee’s overall work profile, the odds of strong performance, engagement, and retention go down significantly.

Identity and Work

Getting to know employees better remains a huge topic in our changing work landscape and one that is garnering more and more attention in relation to early career professionals. In fact, Gen Z (people born between mid-1990’s and late 2000’s) are expecting more from employers in terms of connecting their identity to the job they are hired into. A recent Workforce Institute report published by Kronos that polled 3,400 Gen Zers globally, asked a question of respondents related to what would make them work harder and stay longer at a company. The response was that doing work that they enjoy or care about is as important as a paycheck.

This sentiment aligns to previous research by Ashridge of over 1,000 Gen Y employees about work. Similar to Gen Z, the sentiment about connection of self to work was echoed with a desire to connect themselves to roles that have a clear career path focused on job variety and the opportunity to learn. They want to bring their whole self to work and not be programmed into a purely objective set of rules that strictly govern how a job can be done.

Even in the COVID-19 era, an employee’s identity and connection to work is being challenged. A recent article from the Institute of Public Relations captured this sentiment that the rapid overload of technology to do everything and transparent personal boundaries is forcing people to adapt new work styles to cope. The sentiment is that the view of self is a bit blurry and creating dissonance in the new work reality. This aspect of the person-performance continuum leaves a huge gap for organizations trying to keep up with the pulse of employee job satisfaction from a distance.

It’s funny how we perceive people’s actions to the outcomes we see. And often it’s the assumption we make about the behaviors behind the outcomes that draw the wrong conclusions about how people really tick and feel motivated to do their job. To start thinking about how to seek a better connection between a person and a job, we have to consider the underlying motivation people have about their work.

Know Thyself

On the one hand, a person’s sense of self typically drives certain behaviors and those behaviors reinforce and support the self. Based on this connection, you can build a link between identity and behavior. This link forms a frame of reference used to assess how a person views his/her behavior in that situation.

What this boils down to is how a person shows up to work – their style, and method of interaction with others. This work identity is more productive when the tasks and autonomy to complete those tasks, closely resemble a person’s natural orientation in problem solving, relationship management, and effort/reward expectations. Seems obvious, but often organizations do the opposite through bad job design.

Job Design

It’s clear that an employee’s job involvement and performance increases if the job they perform is aligned with their psychological requirements and perceptions. The person-job alignment approach will ensure employees give 100% and maximize their performance. Plus, a well designed job fosters job satisfaction and loyalty too. In conjunction with a development plan that shows career growth, the psychological perception employees have is positive and feels like an extension of who they are.

The trade-off is that the traditional model of job design has to change. A stale job description that’s been edited a few times and posted to find people to hire, but yet remains unchanged by whoever occupies it, is not a recipe for success. Ultimately this approach of fitting the person’s work profile solely to the job profile is why so many organizations experience employee disengagement in the first place. Ignoring the data behind the work profile is likely to lead to the negative outcomes company’s spend money trying to avoid.

The meaningful work–performance relationship has predictive value in determining an employee’s career success. Rather than companies spending thousands of dollars on programs meant to increase employee loyalty, focusing on identity is what’s needed to strengthen employees’ engagement and desire to stay. And, it just so happens that Jobsurv's sweet spot is helping every person in your company to know themselves, know their work profile, and ultimately increase job satisfaction. Schedule your overview, today!

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