On my way to work, I reflected on the recent change in atmosphere at my workplace, and how it applies to organizational behavior concepts. Due to a change in management and new manager, absenteeism and turnover rate was at an all time high. Meanwhile profits and productivity have been the lowest I have ever experienced since working there.

I found it surprising that the workplace environment had changed over a period as short as one month. I was under the assumption that managers were simply unaware of the current state of employee satisfaction. I soon learned that the feedback from employees were ignored and some were even encouraged to resign by management. I began to wonder if employee satisfaction is indeed an important factor in the retail industry where there is such a high supply of labour, and employees are easily replaceable.

Chapter 2 of the course textbook suggest that, “satisfied employees tend to be more effective than organizations with fewer”. This statement held true to my observations, there was a decline in “organizational citizenship behavior” and very little “normative commitment” when coworkers are not satisfied. However, the text does not mention in detail whether employees, who have grown to become dissatisfied, will ever recover a positive outlook on their organization. Is it worth the employer’s time and effort to try to fix conflict within the existing staff, or is it more beneficial to hire a new set of workers who do not have existing grudges in place?

In my opinion, I believe that employee satisfaction should be taken more seriously, even at the lower positions of an organization. Because these positions usually deal with everyday tasks and directly interact with customers, they serve as a foundation to the company’s reputation. I believe it is more beneficial to retain workers and take measures to make each employee feel content. While I understand that there are benefits to start fresh with new hires, the opportunity cost of training new workers can be mitigated by ensuring the well-being of existing employees.

Langton, N. | Robbins, S. P. | Judge, T. A. (n.d.). Organizational Behaviour (7th Canadian Edition) [Texidium version]. Retrieved from http://texidium.com