ASSESSING CAMPUS QUALITY OF LIFE OF UNIVERSITY’S EMPLOYEES: TESTING PREVIOUS FINDINGS

Quality of life of university’s employees is a crucial aspect of the students experience while they are getting a university’s degree. A good or bad professor or a good or bad general employee can be the difference between a student that wants to stay or wants to quit. Taking care of the campus quality of life for all the workers in an educational institution may boost the job satisfaction of everybody and also could bring a lot of benefits to the institution itself.
Job satisfaction has been an important issue on the quality of life and happiness literature in recent years, and this has been for a reason: satisfied and happy employees have shown to be more productive, better workmates, and less likely to quit. Recent studies done by Gallup show satisfied employees are more engaged with their institution and have less absences and more productivity. Gallup has estimated that firms can save thousands of dollars with slight improvements on job satisfaction by just reducing the absences generated by employees’ sicknesses.
Studying job satisfaction is a lot more evident on developed countries and regions like the US and Europe, but research in less developed countries like Mexico is just starting. Most studies are focused on the evaluation of labor climate or trying to build best firms’ rankings, like the one performed by Great Place to Work. However, designing and using a model to measure systematically quality of work life is one of the avenues that remains unexplored in Mexico.
We used a sample of more than 160 employees at a university in Mexico to test previous findings on the theme of quality of work life. Among them, we explore the relationship between job satisfaction and happiness, the determinants of job satisfaction, the determinants of job engagement, and the relationship between the likelihood of quitting and job satisfaction.
Preliminary results indicate that some of previous findings apply to the surveyed group, although not all of them. For instance, job satisfaction is related to a good relationship with the boss, the feeling of pride for being part of the institution, and the participation on the decisions related to the position, among others. The perception of happiness is mostly related to the own perception of health and the fulfillment of expectations on the job, but contrary to previous literature, it is not related to job satisfaction. Finally, commitment to the institution is related to income level, institution support to achieve financial security, and coincidence on institutional and personal values. Preliminary conclusions might identify university employees as a different breed as compared to other type of workers. However, there is a need to go deeper on this type of studies so we can learn what lies behind quality of work life and job satisfaction in Mexican universities.