This week, the Conference Board research group released results of a nationwide job satisfaction survey. The numbers are abysmal. Only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their job, down 8 percent from last year and over 28 percent from 20 years ago. Among the myriad of reasons for this result, one of the most prominent according to the study: most workers state that their job is not interesting.

In the last decade, some of the most promising and exciting technology products ever created have been not only introduced, but also widely accepted by society. The Internet has revolutionized communication and the way business is done in a number of ways across all industries. Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat highlights this tremendous advancement. The advent of Smartphones will only accelerate this movement and if rumors are true, other products soon to be debuted will open up new avenues for expansion even more. Simultaneously, Twitter, Facebook and other Internet social media Web sites are seeing their user base increase exponentially. With all of this activity, all of this momentum, and all of this innovation, more and more workers are finding their job boring? Something is surely amiss here.

Of course, assuming that these two facts are related is not directly intuitive. Why should advancements in technology and the massive surge of social communications augment how interesting a particular job is? That is where the notion of well-being comes in since it transcends the rudiments of daily job functioning. As outlined in previous blogs on this subject, well-being is a multidimensional construct which includes not only job satisfaction but also life satisfaction and many other elements of an individual’s mental and physical state. In the US, well-being has long been synonymous with wellness and has focused almost exclusively on health care, yet most wellness programs show meager return on investments and have not on the whole contributed to improving the health of the nation’s workforce.

So are social media Web sites and the Internet the answer to improving job satisfaction? Well, yes and no. It is not the static integration of these sites and others like them into a workplace that will create differences, but rather a dynamic interactive stream that allows workers to increase their level of involvement and ultimately their personal stake in and enthusiasm for a company. Expanding the definition and concept of well-being to encompass the true range of characteristics it includes might just help align employee desires with the broader goals of the companies for which they work.

Jobs do not exist in a bubble. They are an essential component of an individual’s identity and part of the fabric of his or her character. In most cases, workers spend more time at work than they do awake at home. Understanding this concept and its connection to well-being is paramount in improving these job satisfaction numbers. The interest is there we believe, it is just being displaced. If a company can re-center it, results could be outstanding.

Tags: Conference Board, Facebook, Job satisfaction, nationwide job satisfaction survey, Thomas Friedman, Twitter, well-being, wellbeing

Posted by Doug Elwood, M.D. on 01/7/10. Categories: Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.