Employee’s Job Satisfaction Driven by His Motivation and Communication in Dubai Police Force
University Of Wollongong In Dubai

United Arab Emirates

The objective of this report is to investigate the relationship between Job satisfaction and employees’ motivation along with communication within an organization. To achieve that objective, Dubai Police Force (DPF) was chosen as subject for this study. DPF where people from different cultural backgrounds, ages, years of experience, genders, educational level and many other characteristics interact. This interaction makes both of communication and motivation deviate from an employee to another. DPF has a sensitive and critical function in the society and country, thus its performance reflected by its employee’s has to be measured. Many believe that an employee’s performance or output depends greatly on his job satisfaction.

To serve the objective mentioned above, feedbacks from employees working in DPF were obtained through a questionnaire then analyzed. The questionnaire targeted employees from different departments to measure the motivation and communication level in each department. Then relate those levels to the job satisfaction level in that department. Quantitative results were not enough to draw a conclusion about the findings, so some qualitative results were included in the analysis of the findings. Those qualitative results were obtained from the direct questions in the questionnaire that asked the respondents to give reasons or extra clarification for their answers.

Our Quantitative analysis showed that the majority of the employees had less motivation than required for the job. On the other hand, most of them showed a higher level of communication compared to motivation. Furthermore, our qualitative analysis showed that most of the demotivation an employee faces is due to the lack of appreciation and recognition of work achieved by him. One finding regarding the communication level was quite unexpected which is that the level of communication within the operation department or Control room was found the least among all others! In the reality it should score the highest positive communication level and that is because it is the department that correlates between all others.

Case Study Title:

Employee’s Job Satisfaction Driven by His Motivation and Communication in Dubai Police Force

Word Count 5,568

Table of Contents: Page

1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………5 a. Overview ………………………………………………………………………5 b. Problem Statement …………………………………………………………….5 c. Objectives ……………………………………………………………………..5 d. Case overview - Dubai Police Force …………………………………………6

1 About Dubai Police Force ………………………………………………6

2 Why Dubai Police Force? ………………………………………………6

3 Key definitions ………………………………………………………………..7

4 What is Job Satisfaction? ……………………………………………….7

Motivation …………………………………………………………………7

6 Communication ………………………………………………………….7

7 Methodology …………………………………………………………………..7

2. Literature Review ………………………………………………………………………8 a. Articles Overview ……………………………………………………………..8 i. Motivation ………………………………………………………………...9 ii. Communication …………………………………………………………...11 b. Findings of other case study ………………………………………………….13 i. Job satisfaction in DPF by Jassem Mohammed Abdulla ……………...13 3. Findings ………………………………………………………………………………..13 a. Questionnaires …………………………………………………………………13 b. Graph Analysis ………………………………………………………………...14 4. Case Analysis ………………………………………………………………………….16 5. Challenges and Limitations ……………………………………………………………18

Recommendation ………………………………………………………………………....19

Conclusion ………………..………………………………………………….…………20

6. References ……………………………………………………………………….………..20 7. Appendices ………………………………………………………………………………..22

List of Tables: Page

Table 1 Communication satisfaction questionnaire ……………………………………..12

Table 2: Frequency and percentage of respondents’ response to the Questionnaire …..17

Table 3: Frequency and percentage of respondents’ response to the Questionnaire ………..17

Table 4: Chart Showing Dissatisfaction …………………………………………………….18

Table 5: Chart Showing Satisfaction Level …………………………………………………18

List of Figures:

Figure 1: Equity theory ……………………………………………….………………….….10

Figure 2; Vroom's expectancy theory ……………………………….……………………....10

Figure 4: Employee satisfaction model Fosam et al. (1998) …………………………….11

Executive Summary:

The objective of this report is to investigate the relationship between Job satisfaction and employees’ motivation along with communication within an organization. To achieve that objective, Dubai Police Force (DPF) was chosen as subject for this study. DPF where people from different cultural backgrounds, ages, years of experience, genders, educational level and many other characteristics interact. This interaction makes both of communication and motivation deviate from an employee to another. DPF has a sensitive and critical function in the society and country, thus its performance reflected by its employee’s has to be measured. Many believe that an employee’s performance or output depends greatly on his job satisfaction.

To serve the objective mentioned above, feedbacks from employees working in DPF were obtained through a questionnaire then analyzed. The questionnaire targeted employees from different departments to measure the motivation and communication level in each department. Then relate those levels to the job satisfaction level in that department. Quantitative results were not enough to draw a conclusion about the findings, so some qualitative results were included in the analysis of the findings. Those qualitative results were obtained from the direct questions in the questionnaire that asked the respondents to give reasons or extra clarification for their answers.

Our Quantitative analysis showed that the majority of the employees had less motivation than required for the job. On the other hand, most of them showed a higher level of communication compared to motivation. Furthermore, our qualitative analysis showed that most of the demotivation an employee faces is due to the lack of appreciation and recognition of work achieved by him. One finding regarding the communication level was quite unexpected which is that the level of communication within the operation department or Control room was found the least among all others! In the reality it should score the highest positive communication level and that is because it is the department that correlates between all others.

1. Introduction a. Overview Are you currently an employee? Did you ever ask yourself if you are satisfied with your employment? Is getting a promotion improves your job attitude? Or does your organization consider other incentives to enhance your performance? What are they? Do you know the factors that affect job satisfaction? Do you feel like the more you are satisfied with your job the more your performance will be? Yes or no. These questions and others can be answered by this paper. This research is studying job satisfaction as one of the primary measurements of job attitudes. This study is performed among Dubai police employees representing one of the largest public sector organizations in UAE. In this report, two independent variables in two levels of the basic OB model are studied in details. Those two variables are motivation from the individual level and communication from the group level. Furthermore, their relationship with the job satisfaction as a dependent variable is discussed. b. Problem Statement Since police work plays a critical role in society, police need to have satisfied employees as their dissatisfaction can cause damages to police image and therefore police will lose people’s trust. As a result, job satisfaction is studied along with the factors affecting it in different levels. • In individual level – motivation • In group level – communication Among other levels and factors, these two are studied in details to figure out how police can achieve job satisfaction by considering motivation and communication. c. Objectives When employees are satisfied with their jobs, it is believed that their attitude towards the job is beneficial to the organization; thus, there is an increased work performance or productivity within that organization. Job satisfaction is used as a qualitative measurement to determine the state of employees work performance. Our objectives in this study are to: 1. Investigate the relationship between Job satisfaction and 1) motivation and 2) communication. 2. Study Dubai Police as a real example and reach our own conclusion on the above relationship. 3. Compare the results and conclusion of our own study with previous studies conducted in the same field.

10 Case overview - Dubai Police Force

11 About Dubai Police Force

“Dubai Police is the most forward thinking and progressive Arab police force today. It employs over seventeen thousand officers of the highest educational standards of any organization. Dubai Police has received both local and international recognition including the ‘Dubai Award for Government Performance’ and the ISO 2000:9001 for applying quality management systems in all police fields. Dubai police also one of the best security institutions, at all levels; locally, regionally, and globally. Dubai Police’s Strategy is to play a major role in society, establishing a ‘Human Rights Department’ within its Administrative Structure.” (Government of Dubai n.d.). “It is an overall ‘Community Police’ that is exercising this role, preceding many police departments in the world. Dubai Police uses the highest and the most precise measures of operation in performing its duties, functions, and powers, through the institutional performance indicators and the practice of the strategic planning, efficiently managing human and financial resources, and through simplifying procedures, strengthen community partnership, innovative initiatives, respect of personal excellence, and teamwork.” (Dubai Police n.d.).

12 Why Dubai Police Force?

Job satisfaction level can assist an organization to enhance departmental policies and practices where dissatisfaction is expressed; furthermore it improves its employee’s attitude and structure. Job satisfaction in the police is crucial since the nature of police work is represented by delivering services to public and thus having dissatisfied employees will affect negatively the police image and reputation. From this point of view, Dubai police strategy is focusing on managing their human resources efficiently in order to reach high levels of job satisfaction. As a factor affecting job satisfaction, motivation is needed within Dubai police employees because of the hard and risky job they are performing daily. Moreover, Dubai police organization has different department with different cultures. This made communication between the employees challenging in terms of satisfying their job requirements.

13 Key definitions

14 What is Job Satisfaction?

Dictionaries defined job satisfaction as: “the extent to which a person’s hopes, desires, and expectations about the employment he is engaged in are fulfilled.” (Collins English Dictionary n.d.). In other words, it is the good feeling that you get once your job expectations are rewarded. according to Dunnette & Jorgenson, job satisfaction is the sum of relations and interactions between workers’ desires, expectations, and the value of what their jobs offer (Badreya Al Jenaibi, 2011).

15 Motivation

Motivation is considered to be in the individual level in the OB model. “Employee motivation describes an employee's basic enthusiasm about work and incentives given to accomplish work. Motivating employees about work is the blend of satisfying the employee's requirements and prospect from work and workplace factors that facilitate employee motivation.” (Ask Jeeves, n.d.).

16 Communication

OB model located communication in group level. “Communication is the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior.” In other words, to communicate is to share. In any organization, “feedback is critical to effective communication between participants” which are the employees. (Ask Jeeves, n.d.).

17 Methodology

In order to accomplish our first objective, literature reviews were viewed in a number of books and journals related to our topic. We went through varied ten recent scholarly sources, mentioned in the sources section. As an observation, two ways of conducting job satisfaction were mostly employed by the researchers, the use of direct interviews or questionnaires. Yet, the use of questionnaires seems to have been adopted more because it has shown to be much easier to quantify and less time consuming as compared to interviews. Factors which are repeated mostly and fit to our case where short listed. After short listing, we developed a questionnaire was conducted to best reflect the independent variables discussed in this report after reviewing several questionnaires. The questionnaire has twenty-three questions; some were directly asking about communication level at workplace others towards motivation. Thirty questionnaires were distributed by our team members to the Dubai police employees in different department including: traffic, airport security, crime and others. However, we received back a total of eighteen. Due to time limitation, we had to proceed with them. Upon receiving the questionnaires, we divided the feedbacks according to various departments to help us further while analyzing and assessing the motivation and communication independent variables, identifying the satisfaction and dissatisfaction levels within these different departments and to end with evaluating the entire organization as a whole. A Matrix was designed to derive quantitative data from the qualitative results from our questionnaires in order to achieve an analytical strategy as stated.

2. Literature Review

In this part of the report different articles and published papers about job satisfaction and motivation and communication are going to be detailed showing the relationship between them. This part consists of two main parts: Articles overview and Analytic study. In the first part collection of theories and hypothesis joining the three variables are going to be discussed, while in the second the summation of results and conclusions those articles found and reached respectively are going to be analyzed.

a. Articles Overview Cranny et al. (1992) stated that job satisfaction can affected a variety of factors, such as the impact on the quality of relationships with superiors, the quality of the physical environment in which they operate, the extent to which they work, and so on. Many studies show that there are many factors that affect job satisfaction. There are certain demographic characteristics (age, education level, seniority, status, marital status, seniority, and work duration) employees who have a significant and direct impact and on their satisfaction stated Abubakr Sulaiman (2012).

Adeyinka Tella, C.O. Ayeni, S. O. Popoola (2007) stated that satisfactory factors motivate employees and vice versa. Motivating factors can be achievements, recognitions, work done in time, the responsibility for promoting and factors associated with the work itself for personal development described by Tella, Ayeni, Popoola (2007). Motivating factors in a working environment gives better job satisfaction of an employee stated by Tella, Ayeni, Popoola (2007).

Lack of education, employee’s qualification, poor communication, lack of job definition select all have negative affect on job satisfaction stated by Lindsay Nicole Ehlers (2003). Participation in management, then in decision making, independence and the work unit and where people work, have a positive influence on job satisfaction main and achievements and recognition in job satisfaction while management policy, relations with superiors and co-workers as a result of dissatisfaction described by Badreya Al Jenaibi (2010). Factors associated with the work itself, in relation to the use of talent, creativity, responsibility, recognition of the impact on job satisfaction stated by Jassem Mohammed Abdulla (2009).

Furthermore, in 2008 researchers found that the job satisfaction level in UAE rating is very low (Gulf news 2008). Researchers found that the percentage of employees who are unhappy and not satisfied at work exceed 73% , while a mere 27% express their positive job satisfaction. Further studies have been captured below will focus on two main factors that affect job satisfaction which are motivation and communication (Gulf news 2008).

i. Motivation Spector (2003) stated that there are tangible and intangible factor affecting employees motivation at work. In addition, Costa (2003) stated that organization competitiveness and effectiveness is linked with the understanding of things motivate employees. Costa (2003) suggested that X-Theory organizations are most likely to fail under competitive, complex and responsive environments.
Mullins (2006) stated that motivating employees is the main road to reach job satisfaction. Herzberg (2003) stated that managers create a understand employees motivation needs in order to allow them to have a reward system. Everett (1995) stated that motivation and the satisfaction of the employees in doing their work play a major role in success or failure of any organization. Lawler (1973) came up with the “Discrepancy theory”. He stated that motivational structure was used to determine the job satisfaction. Discrepancy theory stated that employee’s outcome level is lower than the expected outcome level which results in dissatisfaction Lawler (1973, p65). There were other theories as well that link motivation with the job satisfaction such as Equity Theory and Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory.

John (1963) developed equity theory that stated according to the employee contribution at work, the return has to be at equal and fairness level. In other word, employees measure their experience, qualifications and achievement compared with the reward and recognition they get and comparing their status with other coworkers, they will reach the satisfaction if the comparison is fair as stated in below figure.

[pic]

Figure 1: Equity theory

Bragg (2003) indicated that expert police compared with general duties officers in Queensland police are less satisfies with the promotion and carrier opportunities. Halsey & Osborne (1992) stated that bonuses and rewards are the motivation tools that are not used by police managers.

Goal setting theory stated that employees spend a specific amount of energy that is suited their goals. Locke, Shaw, Saari & Latham (1981) concluded that people who achieved higher performance standard are really the one who set higher goals. Achieving higher goals by inputting higher level of energy has a direct impact on motivation stated by Bandura (1986).

Vroom's (1964) expectancy theory stated that employees reach job satisfaction when individual perform an effort to reach their high performance. From that, the organization should reward them and the rewards have to be attractive to them stated in figure below.

[pic]

Figure 2: Vroom's expectancy theory

According to the previous given theories, the most relevant theory to the Dubai Police topic is the expectancy theory. Since, police officers in Dubai police following producing high efficient job to get a specific needed rewards.

ii. Communication Javed et al. (2004) stated that effective communication has a direct impact on job satisfaction. Effective communication is how clear you transfer ideas, views, appreciation works, orders, etc to the others and they can understand it. As a result, the productivity will increase, management will be satisfied, employees will be rewarded and appreciated, and they will be satisfied in there jobs. Purohit (2004) described communication as a waterfall, easy to move from top to downward but required extra energy to move it from down to upward. Johlke and Duhan, (2000) stated that communication can impact the level of job satisfaction but not the job performance. Fosam et al. (1998) analyzed police organization in UK and found the appropriate employee satisfaction model.

[pic]

Figure 3: Employee satisfaction model Fosam et al. (1998) Graph above shows an employee satisfaction model developed by Fosam et al. (1998). He stated that different factors affect employee satisfaction such as Job satisfaction, Communication,…etc. Therefore, having an effective communication will satisfy employees and will results in job satisfaction. Faicione et al; Goldhaber, Porter, Yates, & Lesniak; Richmond & McCroskey (1977-1979) developed better understanding about communication satisfaction. They studied communication satisfaction at the employees’ workplace where organizations want effective and efficient communicator employees to perform their required job. Two main study perspectives have been defined to study communication in organizations done by Goldhaber et al. (1978). The first main study is the information flow. This will explain if communication flow is moving upward or downward in organization. Goldhaber et al. (1978) explained the second main study as attitude or perception perspective which explains the employees’ attitude toward organization.

Downs and Hazen (1977) study examined job and communication satisfaction relation. Downs and Hazen (1977) developed a test to determine the level of satisfaction. The communication satisfaction questionnaire focuses on eight areas explained by Downs and Hazen (1977).

Table 1: Communication satisfaction questionnaire

|Questionnaire Areas |
|Communication climate |
|Supervisor satisfaction |
|Media quality |
|Horizontal informal communication |
|Organizational integration |
|Personal feedback |
|Organizational perspective |
|Subordinate communication |

The Hecht’s Interpersonal Communication Inventory (1978) is a wider study used to see the communication relationship between people. In this study, a face to face interview and questionnaires were conducted. The Hecht’s Interpersonal Communication Inventory (1978) utilized in many different usage in context like police officers studied by Glauser & Tuller (1985), and communication in general studied by Rubin & Rubin (1989). Wheeless, et al. (1984) studied the relationship of communication satisfaction with supervisor. Wheeless, et al. (1984) concluded that communication satisfaction with supervisor has a direct impact on the job satisfaction of employees. More studies done on communication and job satisfaction and the one done by Miles, Patrick, and King (1996) is one of them. They studied “whether job level significantly moderates the relationship between superior-subordinate communication and job satisfaction” (p. 278). Pincus (1986) studied if communication and job satisfaction are affected by upper management. Moreover, Rodwell et al. (1998) stated, “managers need to move beyond the met myth that more communication is better and focus more precisely on what forms of communication can actually be more effective” (p. 298).

b. Findings of other case study

i. Job satisfaction in DPF by Jassem Mohammed Abdulla Jasssem Abdulla did a case study that relates the job satisfaction to different factors in Dubai Police Force. Our case study and this source share the same subject organization which is Dubai Police Force. This source conducted a survey on 1,017 employees working in 18 general departments in DPF. This shows how variant and precise are the responses. Not only had that, but also conducted some interview. It can be said that his methods are so accurate for obtaining his results. Though, he represents the results in a different way. Instead of using graphs and percentages, he used linear programming to determine the strength of the relation between different factors and job satisfaction. Only those results related to the chosen variables which are the motivation and communication are chosen among many others. Before displaying the results of this source it is important to discuss the way they are discussed because it is complicated and rarely used.
This 1st finding is related directly to the motivation and job satisfaction which is the nature of the job. With (r = 0.484, p