Affective Events Theory - Factors Affecting Employee Experience at Work

Factors Affecting Employee Experience At Work

The relationships between components associated with work (e.g., tasks, autonomy, job demands, and emotional labor) and their impact on job outcomes support AET. Tasks that are considered challenging, rewarding, or that provide an opportunity to develop new skills induce positive affect and increase job satisfaction. Alternatively, tasks that are rated as routine, boring, or overwhelming are associated with negative affect (e.g., low self-esteem, low self-confidence) and concerns over job evaluations. This may lead workers to engage in planned quitting behaviours.

The degree of autonomy workers have in their jobs affects their productivity, satisfaction, and intention to quit. Research shows that the ability to make decisions and influence what happens on the job has the greatest impact on job satisfaction, particularly among young male workers. Job autonomy even trumps income's effect on job satisfaction. Alternatively, work overload significantly reduces job satisfaction among middle-aged women and men but does not significantly impact job satisfaction among young male workers. These differences between the age and gender of workers indicate differences in career phase, where young (male) workers are more likely to put up with or expect work overload, while middle-aged workers tend to be approaching their peak and may expect some concessions (e.g., based on track record, merit, or currency to the organization).

Likewise, work flexibility affects job satisfaction. In fact, the flexibility to decide when work is performed ranks number one among women and number two or three among men in determining the characteristics of a satisfying job. Similar to job autonomy, job flexibility is more important than income when evaluating job satisfaction. Flexibility to determine one's work schedule is an important contributor to job satisfaction across the spectrum of low- and high-income jobs. Work flexibility empowers employees by reducing the incidence of work-family conflicts and engagement in planned quitting to improve overall quality of life. Positive affect is a fringe benefit of work flexibility that pays rich dividends to both employees and their employers, empowering the former and improving the ability of the latter to retain workers.

Past research has suggested that workplace affect was a state-oriented construct (like emotions and mood) that depended upon the work environment or situations encountered at work. However, more recent research describes affect as a dispositional trait that is dependent upon the individual. Although workplace events have a significant impact on employees, their mood largely determines the intensity of their reaction to events experienced at work. This emotional response intensity tends to affect job performance and satisfaction. Other employment variables, like effort, leaving, deviance, commitment, and citizenship, are also affected by positive and negative perceptions of events experienced at work.

General cognitive ability (also known as 'g') and personality also influence job performance. Emotion and cognition help to explain Organizational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB). For example, emotions about one’s job (i.e., job affect) are strongly associated with OCBs directed at individuals, while one’s thoughts or job cognitions are reportedly more strongly associated with OCBs directed at the organization. The outcome of how satisfied an individual employee is with her/his job within the organization may depend upon how s/he perceives an incident experienced at work. Job satisfaction also depends upon the emotions and thoughts associated with that perception, as well as the social support provided by co-workers and the organization as a whole.