Trade‐off Exercise — A New Measure of Job Attitudes

Job satisfaction is an issue which has concerned personnel managers for many years. There are now numerous questionnaires and measures available to assist in the evaluation of job satisfaction. However, personnel managers have only a limited amount of resources at their disposal to improve job satisfaction. On a practical basis, what personnel managers need is a way of assessing how people feel about the varying options and facets which the organisation is or can offer. They need to know how people feel about the whole package deal the organisation offers, rather than how they evaluate each aspect in isolation. Some organisations, for example, offer high wages but low job security and uninteresting work. Others may be able to provide a secure job but not be able to pay very high wages. Hence, what the personnel manager needs to know is how they can improve the mix of facets and benefits that they can provide. The trade‐off exercise described in this article is a way of doing just this.