What Attitudes Might Employees Hold?

Adobe Systems Inc. wanted to know what makes its 18,000 employees happy—and found out by surveying different segments of its workforce every quarter in 2017. These anonymous surveys asked employees questions such as whether they felt they could be themselves at work, whether they were encouraged to think creatively, whether they felt their work contributed to overall company goals, and whether they would recommend a job with Adobe to others.8 With this information, managers are getting a feel for how employees view the company. (See Case Application #3 for more about Adobe’s approach.)

Naturally, managers are not interested in every attitude an employee might hold. Rather, they’re specifically interested in the following:9

Job-Related Attitudes

  • Job satisfaction is an employee’s general attitude toward his or her job. When people speak of employee attitudes, more often than not they mean job satisfaction.

  • Job involvement is the degree to which an employee identifies with his or her job, actively participates in it, and considers his or her job performance important for self-worth.

  • Organizational commitment represents an employee’s orientation toward the organization in terms of his or her loyalty to, identification with, and involvement in the organization.

A concept associated with job attitudes generating widespread interest is employee engagement, which happens when employees are connected to, satisfied with, and enthusiastic about their jobs.10 Highly engaged employees are passionate about and deeply connected to their work. Disengaged employees have essentially “checked out” and don’t care. They show up for work, but have no energy or passion for it. A global study of more than 12,000 employees found that the top five factors contributing to employee engagement were:11

  1. Respect

  2. Type of work

  3. Work/life balance

  4. Providing good service to customers

  5. Base pay

Having highly engaged employees produces both benefits and costs. Highly engaged employees are two-and-a-half times more likely to be top performers than their less-engaged coworkers. In addition, companies with highly engaged employees have higher retention rates, which help keep recruiting and training costs low. And both of these outcomes—higher performance and lower costs—contribute to superior financial performance.12

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