How employees behave at work often depends on how they feel about being there. Therefore, making sense of how employees behave depends on leaders comprehending WORK ATTITUDES!
Work attitude is all about your employee’s opinions, beliefs, and feelings about aspects of your work environment and culture. As an executive coach, I’ve learned that the two job attitudes that have the greatest potential to influence how employees behave are job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Job satisfaction is the feelings employees have toward their job. As an employee’s job satisfaction decreases, the likelihood of them resigning increases.
Organizational commitment is the emotional attachment employees have toward their organization. A highly committed employee puts forth discretionary energy, which is the energy that an employee chooses to exert when serving coworkers or customers beyond the basic job requirements.
There’s tremendous overlap between job satisfaction and organizational commitment because things that make employees happy with their career often make them more committed to the organization as well. Companies should track these attitudes beyond conducting surveys because they often are associated with outcomes such as performance, collaboration, and employee attrition.
What Enhances Positive Work Attitudes?
🔘Characteristics of the job.
🔘How leaders treat their employees.
🔘The relationships employees form with colleagues and leaders.
🔘The level of stress associated with the job.
Personality and values play important roles in how employees feel about their jobs, so it may behoove you to peruse my blog post on May 30, 2025, on the Big 5 Personality Traits (OCEAN).
