Abstract:

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 administrative employee can be the difference between a student that wants to stay or wants to quit. Taking care of the campus quality of life of employees 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, have fewer absences and are more productive. 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 recent research topic in less developed countries like Mexico. 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 has been unexplored in Mexico.

We used a sample of more than 150 employees at a private university in Mexico to test previous findings on the theme of job satisfaction and to find if the type of work has an influence on the items that affect job satisfaction. To test previous findings, 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. On the other hand, it is believed that professors at higher education institutions in Mexico sacrifice earnings in order to have a more meaningful job. So, we would expect that the items that affect a professor’s job satisfaction are different to those affecting other type of employees (i.e. administrative and academic/administrative employees).

Preliminary results indicate that some of previous findings apply to the surveyed group, although not all of them. For instance, for the whole sample 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. On the other hand, although there are several items that are common in explaining job satisfaction for the three groups (academic, administrative and academic/administrative employees), there are special items that affect only a specific group. This might provide useful information for the general administration in terms of taking specific actions aimed to boost job satisfaction and quality of life of university employees.

Keywords:

Job Satisfaction, Mexico, Types of Job.