Reflective Essay on Job Dissatisfaction and Motivation Theories

REFLECTIVE ESSAY 1
Reflective Essay
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REFLECTIVE ESSAY 2
Introduction
The following is a reflection of my job dissatisfaction as an administrator at Mercy Place
East Melbourne. This reflection paper covers job satisfaction concepts along with various
motivation theories: Hierarchy of Needs job satisfaction, Job Characteristics Model, and
Motivator-Hygiene Theory. The reflection also takes into account my experiences along with the
motivational factors in the various theories that led to my dissatisfaction.
After graduating with a degree in Community and Social Work, I was got a chance at
Mercy Place East Melbourne that majored on caring of people with different disability and
diseases. For the first year, I had a rough time dealing with both the clients and staffs that were in
the Homecare. The experiences led to my job dissatisfaction in my career. Job satisfaction
concept has different views. Jodlbauer, Selenko, Batinic & Stiglbauer, (2011) viewed job
satisfaction as a feeling that produced positive or negative effect towards the assigned
responsibilities. Wnuk, (2017, p.32) defines job satisfaction as an attitude developed towards a
particular job and perception of job fitness. Wnuk expressed that some factors such as salary,
working environment and motivation affects the level of liking or disliking the job. There are
numerous factors in an organization that causes job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction.
Among the factors are appropriate rewards such good salary, supportive working
conditions from both the boss and colleagues well as instrument, compatibility between
employee and the assigned task, other motivational aspects such as promotion and
recognition( Persaud, 2018,p.5). Job satisfactions have great importance in the workplace. From
the survey conducted in the United States that many 84 % of satisfied employees indicated that
they would not think of quitting the job, thus helps the organizations to reduce employee

REFLECTIVE ESSAY 3
turnover as well as retain the best employees. Most of the satisfied employees identified
promotion, salary increment, reward, good working conditions as the best contributors to job
satisfaction.
From the survey, 54% of the unsatisfied employees indicated that they would leave the
job in case of any new opportunity (Hur, 2019). The employees indicated that poor working
relations, small salary and failure of employee motivation as the major contributors of the
dissatisfaction. While 48% of the dissatisfied employees indicated that they would not reapply
for the same position if given an opportunity again. Therefore, job satisfaction concept thus
focuses on the happiness of an employee.
Reflecting upon my internship experience, I would say that the major cause of job
satisfaction was the organizational structure, employee structure and compositions as well as
lack of coherent among the stakeholders. As an administrator, I was responsible for ensuring
that facility activities run smoothly according to day-day activities schedule. However this was
always difficult as a result of the following: First, the director was not well versed with the
relevant information required in ensuring quality services to the old people. The director was the
son of the founder of the institution, thus assumed the role after the death of the father. The
inadequacy of the knowledge made the direct to object numerous suggestion that I would put
forward in ensuring that the facility operates in a more sustainable strategy while acquiring
reasonable revenue. In most cases, I would work with little budget thus made some of the core
activities such as providing nutritious meals to the clients to be a difficult thing. The results were
always deteriorating the health of the clients; these led to the loss of loyalty among some clients
who withdrew their families from the facility, translating into loss to the facility.

REFLECTIVE ESSAY 4
Alessandri, Borgogni and Latham, (2016) identified top-management relationship as
key significant in job satisfaction of employees. Employers can demonstrate interest and concern
about the employees as well as the ability to provide emotional and technical support to
employee to achieve the objectives effectively. Birkenmeier and Sanséau, (2015,p.16`) also
denote that supervisors are significant in the induction phase since they are responsible for the
new employee adaptability to the new endearment. Director’s roles include: nurturing of new
employees’ feelings, beliefs and attitudes toward the new roles thus leading to maximum
satisfaction.
The second contributor was the poor employee relation policies that were available. Most
of the employees did not have academic qualifications that were significant for the old care.
Some of the employees were directors’ relatives, and family members thus resulted in inadequate
skills as well as poor employee relations policies. These made daily operations of the facility to
be difficult as many employees were assigned tasks that they could not complete satisfaction;y
thus led to poor performance. My attempt in changing the employee composition was not easy,
as the director took the overall role of recruiting and firing.
Employees’ poor performance resulted from wrong task allocation, and this was
translated into my experience too. (Rhodes & Fletcher, 2013, p.49) State job satisfaction is
determined by the type of task or job assigned. Factors that influence job satisfaction focus on
how the assigned task is structured to either create increase, learning opportunities and
acceptability of the responsibility (Hans, 2019). The role of drafting safe work policies was a
good opportunity to learn more in the human resource departments especially on employee
relation policies. However, the role should be on the Human Resource manager, and even a