Job satisfaction means many different things. For some, job satisfaction means 45 percent net at the end of the year and over $300,000 in take-home pay. For others, job satisfaction may be getting off work early enough to greet their children as they step off the school bus.
Finding your own definition of job satisfaction is important, because it determines the direction of your professional career. If it’s not clearly defined the choices you make day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year may lead you in a direction that you never set out to be your destination.
Listening to continuing education seminars and reading journals would lead one to believe that job satisfaction is solely financial. However, I think optometry provides many opportunities even beyond financial that can lead to ultimately satisfying careers.
Three non-financial aspects of job satisfaction.
- Autonomy – this is a game changer for many of the generation X, Y and millennials. To have the freedom to work when we want, how we want, and how often we want supersedes the carrot of financial freedom and a comfortable retirement at the end of the road. Yes, we want to be paid well, but much more importantly we want to enjoy the journey.
- Flexible schedule – now more than ever, a flexible schedule that allows freedom to pursue other interests or attend to family matters has become as important–if not more important–than financial compensation.
- Clinical mosaic – practicing full-scope optometry in a setting that embraces the medical model leads to a variety of tasks that can be extremely fulfilling. The associate optometrists who I have talked to who are unhappy with their jobs spend nearly all of their time doing refractions and contact lens fittings. Whether it is a commercial setting or a private practice that doesn’t embrace the medical model, working in an environment that lacks the equipment and means necessary to practice all aspects of optometry will be less satisfying. Finding a practice with great financial compensation and a clinical mosaic can be very fulfilling professionally and should be part of your job satisfaction definition.
Before making long-term decisions like buying a practice or going into corporate optometry, it is important to define your long-term desires. If not, you might find that you’ve given everything for what you thought to be financial job satisfaction but you’ve lost autonomy, a flexible schedule, and a clinical mosaic that challenges you. Job satisfaction is a journey. When well-planned it is enjoyable, fulfilling, and rewarding.
