Job Satisfaction and Job Security

"A company’s long-term success is primarily dependent on the job satisfaction and the job security felt by the company’s employees."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

I partly agree with the above opinion. Although I agree that job satisfaction is important for long term success of a company, I do not agree that job security is that important.

Job satisfaction is the foundation on which a company can be built. The primary reason is simple and elementary: a happy employee is a productive employee. And nothing saps happiness faster than being in the wrong job. The person has to carry the job like a burden, like a solemn duty. With such a state of mind, there is not much chance of him being productive. An unsatisfied employee is also more likely to leave the company, resulting in re-hiring and re-training costs. Hence, it is not difficult to see that lack of job satisfaction can indeed be detrimental to the company's long term success. A good example I can think of is that of my engineering group where nobody has left the company since past 5 years because everybody finds their job immensely satisfying, rewarding and challenging. This enables them to deliver excellent results which in turn helps the company to grow.

Job security, however, is another ball game. I believe job security should be linked to performance; lack of challenge often makes people complacent and unwilling to either grow or learn. The most pertinent example I can think of is of Government bureaucrats. Government bureaucrats, generally, have the most secure job in the world. Since they know that nothing can take their job away, they are least bothered about the results they deliver. This leads to the country wasting colossal amount of money on ill-advised project executed in the most wasteful fashion. If the bureaucrats were liable for their actions and their jobs were not that secure, I am sure there would delivered much better results and the country would have seen much more progress than we see today.

Concluding, employee job satisfaction is critical to a company's long-term prospects as a happy employee is a productive employee. A satisfied employee is more likely to stick with the company and contribute more to the company's growth. Job security, on the other hand, can make an employee unproductive and complacent;this harms a company's long term chances of being successful.