More Personality & Productivity

Earlier we discussed an article about Dr. Nathan Bowling’s research , and about how he believes that personality is related to both productivity and satisfaction, and that satisfaction is does not cause productivity – it is simply correlated with it. But it’s hard to believe this is true, and while it’s possible that this may be the case, there are simply too many reasons to think that satisfaction does affect productivity – not only directly, but indirectly.

Low Satisfaction and Productivity It’s not necessarily about whether or not employee satisfaction increases productivity. It’s also about avoiding a decrease in productivity – including a decrease in productivity from those employees that may not have the personality characteristics that Dr. Bowling addresses.

Even subjectively, it’s easy to see how a rough day at work or justifiably low satisfaction (from mistreatment, etc.) would harm productivity. People are often going to do the bare minimum to get by, and it’s possible that they were doing the bare minimum at the time. Maybe they even tried extra hard for a short period of time to try to earn back some respect.

But it’s easy to see how having low satisfaction could decrease productivity, even if high satisfaction won’t increase it. Company Commitment of Productive Employees It is known that satisfaction and employee loyalty have something in common. Dr.

Bowling’s indications would be that employers shouldn’t care about loyalty either, because the satisfied employees would, apparently, be satisfied anyway based on their personality, and end up staying with the company. It seems unlikely –and unwise – for companies to assume their most productive and satisfied customers are going to stay with the company without any satisfaction efforts from the part of the organization. At the very least it should be obvious how improving satisfaction to increase longevity of the best employees should be an important part of the culture.

It would be silly to believe you can hire people with a great personality for high satisfaction and productivity and do nothing else. Attracting the Most Productive Employees Employee satisfaction also has an indirect value to productivity as well. An organization that is clearly dedicated to satisfaction should attract the best employees, because good employees want to work for companies that do things for them.

Think about how many great workers apply to Google, and it’s not just because they are quickly taking over the entire world. Google has been dedicated to employee satisfaction for years, and potentially productive employees want to work for that type of company. We’ll continue to go over some of the reasons satisfaction and productivity may be linked in the next article.