在人力資源管理之中，更多的關注點就是工作滿意度，它在管理組織中是非常重要的。工作滿意度意味著員工對于工作是否關心或者高興。心情好的人們在他們的工作之中覺得他們正在享受工作。工作滿意度清楚的關系到工作表現及公司的發展潛力。公司管理的風格與文化，員工的參與度，許可與自主選擇權這些很大程度上都會對工作滿意度與工作表現產生影響。一般的方法就是提高員工的薪水來測量員工的反應如何。在現代化管理中組織人員應該更多的關注員工滿意度因為工作滿意度與影響工作態度及員工的工作表現。

In modern human resources management, much has been talked about job satisfaction and its importance in the management of an organization. Job satisfaction means the extent to which an individual employee is content and happy with his or her job. The happier people are within their job, the more satisfied they are said to be. Job satisfaction is clearly associated with job performance and the potential development of a company. The management style and culture, employee involvement, empowerment and autonomous work position all have great influence on job satisfaction and job performance. Job satisfaction should be frequently measured within organizations. The most common method of measurement is to employ rating scales in which employees report their reactions and responses to their jobs. In modern management, organizations should pay more attention to the employees’ satisfaction of their jobs because job satisfaction impact job attitudes and employee performance.

Managing employee performance is a compensable part of what all managers and rating officials perform all through the year. It is as important as financial resources and program outcomes management because employee performance has a profound influence on the financial and program components of any organization. (Bills, 2009) The annual performance program involves all staff members and managers and covers the evaluation of work-related behaviors and potential of employees and determining how well employees are doing their job, communicating that information to employees, agreeing on new objectives and establishing a plan for performance improvement. Performance management is aimed to improve organisational, functional, unit and individual performance by linking the objectives of each. Every organization has its own employee performance appraisal system and there always exist some problems with the performance appraisal system. These appraisal systems have positive and negative impact on the extent to which employees are satisfied with their jobs and career performance. For example, there is a five-level performance appraisal system in which the staff members are forced to be distributed a level rating at Red Square Industries. At the same time, a lot of issues come with the five-level performance appraisal system. Therefore, organizations should design effective employee performance appraisal systems in order to get employees to get more satisfaction from their jobs. Here is an example to illustrate it.

At Red Square Industries, the top 10 per cent are Superior performers with a 1 rating; the next 25 per cent rated 2 good performers; the next 45 per cent rated 3 acceptable performers; the next 15% marginal performers rated 4 and the bottom 5% unsatisfactory performers with a rating 5. Employees with a 5 rating are given three to six months to enhance their performance before they are considered for employment relationship termination. Those rated from 1 to 3 have salary increases and those with 1 or 2 rating bonus payments; only legally required increases are given employees rated 4 and 5. (Stone, R 2010).

Performance appraisals play a very essential role in the effective management and evaluation of staff members in an organization. In annual performance appraisal programs, employers and workers mutually review the employee’s responsibilities, performance and short-term and long-term goals and together figure out what can be done to make sure there will be some improvement in employment performance. And in general there are four major objectives of performance appraisal:

First, every worker makes different contributions to an organization because their knowledge, skills and competencies differ. Some employees have good performances and some do not. These staff members need to be discriminated on the basis of their performance which is conducive to stimulating the staff who did well in their jobs to work harder and perform better later and brings those who did bad jobs to the realization that they must work harder and devote more to their own jobs in order to keep up with the good performers. The employment performance appraisal system stated above at Red Square Industries stimulates the workers to take more efforts to do their work well by ranking the staff members and giving them different titles such as “stars” and “dogs”.

Second, according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, every one has physical and social needs. Every one desires to be rewarded for their good deeds. The managers can build into jobs the opportunity to fulfil the needs of the employees. The workers will be motivated and the managers will harvest the benefits together with the employees. (Hillman, 1996) In business fields, the employees’ needs must be satisfied and the workers must be rewarded for their good performances in completing their jobs. Of course, the staff must be rewarded in a manner that good performers get more benefits and rewards both financial and non-financial. In order to obtain more benefits, the workers will delicate more time and energy to what they are engaged in doing. At Red Square Industries, Salary increases are awarded to those rated 1, 2 and bonus payments awarded only to those rated 1 or 2. Employees rated 4 and 5 are only given legally required increases. The performance appraisal system motivate and encourage the staff members to do better in their job responsibilities while trying to gain a higher salary or other benefits and have better spiritual enjoyment with more money.

There are a lot of error sources. For example, according to Edward L. Thorndike, the first person to support the halo effect through empirical researches, (Edward L. Thorndike, 1920) a person tends to get a general judgement of a person from one trait or aspect of the person especially when there is not enough information on the person. Thus, the bias can’t be avoided. A rater is also no exception in the judgement of a person’s job.
 
Almost one in three Australian employees makes a close connection between their job pay and employment performance and job satisfaction. The significant difference in individual employee performance is a result of factors outside the individual’s control. Management appraisers are incapable of distinguishing between employee-caused and system-caused variations in performance. Thus, all this gets some of the employees to be not satisfied with their rating and think they are not treated fairly. Therefore, the relationships between the staff become inharmonious and unhealthy and it’s difficult for them to cooperate; the performance appraisal program held every year causes enormous tension and dissatisfaction between employees at Red Square Industries. The typical attitude is that if they are good performers, they can solve the problem on their own. Thus, let them do it alone. Likewise, a problem exists with a number of employees with a rating 3 because they think their ratings average. As a result, they become unmotivated and quit the company. Finally, a major source of contention exists with those workers rated as ‘dogs’. And many managers claim that the forced ranking distribution of employees creates too much ill feeling and is not fair. These issues have existed for a period of time and have exerted great negative impact on Red Square Industries. The CEO of Red Square Industries has been concerned about the fact that the current performance appraisal system is lacking in the effectiveness and usefulness. I, the HR Director of Red Square Industries, have been asked by the CEO to analyze and report on the advantages and disadvantages of the present performance appraisal system and make some recommendations for the changes in the performance appraisal system in order to improve and perfect the system.

To make the whole performance appraisal process more effective and efficient, it is quite important for both the employees and the managers to act reasonably according to the characteristics of roles of themselves. On one hand, the employees should act positively and co-operate with their managers in the evaluating process. On the other hand, the managers must think out a number of efficient systems and improvements plans to carry out the performance appraisal process. To achieve this, it will make a big difference for the managers to avoid the potential errors and use appropriate methods to help with the evaluating work. Accepted by most specialists are the three tools: full participation of employees, frequent feedback and proper goal setting.

Since employees are the targets of the evaluating process by the managers it is quite important for the employees themselves to take part in the whole process as well. When the employees see clearly how the performance of them has been managed and what the mistakes and weaknesses are, they can act more positively towards the efficiency of the system and give relevant opinions on how to improve it and how to adjust themselves. Both the employees and managers are involved in the appraisal process so that it is primarily important for the two parties to work together. (Goddard, 2007) .

In the case of Red Square Industries, those more politically powerful managers refuse to rate their employees 4 or 5, which lead to great extension and dissatisfaction because of unfairness. Therefore the CEO of Red Square Industries should ask their employees to take part in the appraisal process as well so that they can be more satisfied with the results.

It is just like you have a feeling for a kind of food you have just tasted or done by yourself. The purpose is to work out what the possible adjustments can be made to do better the next time. The appraisal process is just the same as this. Frequent and proper feedback by everyone in the company can give a thorough reflection of how the work has been done and what are the good points to be continued and also those bad ones to be get rid of. One of the most effective ways of feedback is the so-called 360 feedback. It is a new method applied by a number of companies around the world and proves to be efficient in providing the needed information of the employees to the managers. But managers should also learn to leave out improper information caused by biases. At the Red Square Industries, managers should notice that it is quite important to collect information from every employee and know how they feel and are doing. Only in this way can supervisors analyse the feedback appropriately.

Above all, most successful companies confess that they have used effectively at least one of the three methods stated above. The combination of them will especially make a big difference for the performance appraisal process. In such case, the Red Square Industries should learn to make use of the three ways to contribute to an integrated and efficient program and system for their company.    
 
Since job satisfaction is closed associated with employee performance, it must be measured frequently by organizations. It can be assessed by using a lot of questions regarding the rate of pay, work responsibilities, variety of tasks, promotional opportunities, the work itself and co-workers. Some questioners ask yes or no questions while others ask to rate satisfaction on 1-5 scale where 1 represents "not at all satisfied" and 5 represents "extremely satisfied". There are some models of job satisfaction. First, Edwin A. Locke’s Range of Affect Theory is arguably the most famous job satisfaction model. The main premise of this theory is that satisfaction is determined by a discrepancy between what one wants in a job and what one has in a job. Further, the theory states that how much one values a given facet of work (e.g. the degree of autonomy in a position) moderates how satisfied/dissatisfied one becomes when expectations are/aren’t met. When a person values a particular facet of a job, his satisfaction is more greatly impacted both positively (when expectations are met) and negatively (when expectations are not met), compared to one who doesn’t value that facet. To illustrate, if Employee A values autonomy in the workplace and Employee B is indifferent about autonomy, then Employee A would be more satisfied in a position that offers a high degree of autonomy and less satisfied in a position with little or no autonomy compared to Employee B. This theory also states that too much of a particular facet will produce stronger feelings of dissatisfaction the more a worker values that facet. In addition, another well-known job satisfaction theory is the Dispositional Theory. It is a very general theory that suggests that people have innate dispositions that cause them to have tendencies toward a certain level of satisfaction, regardless of one’s job. This approach became a notable explanation of job satisfaction in light of evidence that job satisfaction tends to be stable over time and across careers and jobs. Research also indicates that identical twins have similar levels of job satisfaction.

 In conclusion, happier employees on the whole is more productive in their jobs, that’s have a good employee performance. Organizations should work out effective employee performance appraisal systems which can enable employees to be more satisfied with their job and have a positive attitude toward their jobs. And a lot of work should be done within organizations on the understanding and knowledge of job satisfaction.

1. Mark Bills, 2009. A Guide for Managers/Supervisors and Employees, Vol 2.http://www.400190.com/MBA/
2. Stone, R 2010, Managing Human Resources 3rd Ed, John Wiley & Sons, Milton.
3. Linda Harbaugh Hillman,1996, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Vol8, Heneil and Heniel publishers.
4. Thorndike, E.L. (1998). A constant error on psychological rating. Journal of Applied Psychology, IV, Vol 7
5. Wayne Goddard, 2007, performance appraisals, performance evaluation and assessment of job skills, personality and behaviors, vol 78