Recent Graduates Feel Dissatisfied and Insecure in the Workplace

Recent Graduates Feel Dissatisfied and Insecure in the Workplace

By: Alexander Shively

            Recent college graduates beginning to enter the workplace are usually much more dissatisfied when compared to older employees. The dissatisfaction comes into place because they are coming out of college with unrealistic expectations of what the workplace is like. Also young workers don’t feel as if they are in control of their jobs because they don’t have the social support of their supervisors or coworker. This usually can lead to high levels of stress, which is what causes them to feel highly unsecure about their jobs. This is a common type of situation in the workplace in these days because business owners expect young workers that are entering the workplace to already know everything but in reality new workers may not be getting the training that they need to succeed.

Relevance to organizational performance

            Since there are always new young employees being hired into businesses if they feel as if they have no control of the work they are doing meaning they don’t feel like its as good as it could possibly be due to lack of knowledge. This can greatly affect a businesses performance in the workplace because if new employees aren’t doing their best work then the business can suffer since these employees could possibly be with the company for many years to come so you would want them to be performing their best. If businesses allow young employees to feel dissatisfied then it may cause stress or anger. The neuroticism is a trait from the big five personality which is a persons emotional stability. When someone scored high is neuroticism it can lead to someone being in a bad mood for long period of time and also can affect decision making. A company’s performance like customer service may also fall since anger or stress usually leads to an employee not caring about how they are acting towards a customer.

            In an article written about job satisfaction and age it talks about how age is the best measure of job satisfaction in the workplace (Burks, 2013). Also the talk about how older people have realized what they excel in compared to younger workers that may not know exactly what they like or are best at in the real world workplace. This just shows that since young employees are less satisfied it can lead them to second thought what they are doing causing them to conduct less productive work. Overall an organization success can be greatly affects from how well these young employees are being trained.

Description from the articles

A study conducted by (Fitzgerald, 2003) was to study how work conditions affect a young employees stress and anger in the workplace. They conducted a study using 230 young people of both genders who haven’t been in the workplace for too long using a survey. In this study they were able to find that young workers with low levels of a feeling of job control were associated with bigger feeling of anger towards supervisors and co-workers. Also they found that low supervision support resulted in larger levels of anger and stress in employees. This just shows that employers that don’t give the proper support to their employees can lead to poor performance from employees. This study was able to result in the finding that workplace support can greatly affect an employee’s satisfaction in their work environment.

This article is a research study conducted from data of 128 fresh college graduates and their expectations of the workplace compared to the actual experiences had in the workplace. When (Jusoh, 2011) started this study by explain how college graduates enter the workplace with expectations that they are going to secure, satisfied, and good paying jobs. They used a questionnaire to conduct the study that had four main sections about job characteristics, satisfaction, commitment, and demographics. Through these surveys they were able to conclude that employers are not meeting the graduates expectations of what their work experience would be like. Here is a list of some questions with what college graduates expected compared to how they actually are in the workplace.

 

This study also found that graduate employees are commonly dissatisfied with their particular job and work conditions likely causing them to only be apart of a company for a brief period of time. Young workers expectations impact their job satisfaction in the workplace compared to what they had been taught throughout college.

Take away points

Throughout these articles we can find that employers need to start satisfying their new workers in some ways because when young employees feel like the job they are is just a temporary. The new workers won’t perform as well as if they thought they were going to move up in the company in the future. These article were also found that older employees feel more satisfied due them having more knowledge and experience in the work that there doing. Young workers are a huge asset to companies these days because as technology changes younger people know how to work with it better so businesses need to make these young workers feel secure giving them a reason to want to stay with the company. One thing that is causing young worker to be so dissatisfied in the workplace is that their high expectations are causing them to be disappointed when they realize what the workplace is actually like. Schools need to make sure students understand what expectations they should have since business supervisors aren’t going to satisfy all of there expectations. Businesses should also understand what these new employees are expecting and be willing to help them transition into how the company actually runs rather expecting them to catch on all by themselves.

References

Burks, F., & Media, D. (2013). What Is the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction & Age? | Chron.com. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/relationship-between-job-satisfaction-age-12618.html

Castro, D., & Brian, A. (2003). The effect of emotional labor on depression and job dissatisfaction among young workers. ProQuest. Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://search.proquest.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/docview/288119823/fulltextPDF?accountid=12924

Fitzgerald, S. T., Haythornthwaite, J. A., Suchday, S., & Ewart, C. K. (2003, August). Anger in Young Black and White Workers: Effects of Job Control, Dissatisfaction, and Support. Springer Link. Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://download.springer.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/static/pdf/466/art%253A10.1023%252FA%253A1024228026022.pdf?auth66=1364355507_46f4edec90e99b7a0efd65b86d589a97&ext=.pdf

Jusoh, M., Simun, M., & Siong, C. C. (2011). Expectation gaps, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment of fresh graduates. Education & Training, 53(6), 515-530. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00400911111159476