Abstract:

Job satisfaction is one of the three most important predictors of well-being, alongside marriage and family [1]. Job satisfaction can be defined as a result of experiences and emotions experienced in the work environment that affect social life, affective bonds and mental health [2]. The present study aimed to analyze job satisfaction and to identify the factors that most contribute to improve the level of job satisfaction. To achieve these objectives, a quantitative and cross-sectional study was carried out based on a probabilistic sample of 105 Portuguese employees from a higher education institution out of 783. Therefore, the sampling error, for a confidence level of 95%, was 8.9%. The data collection took place from October 22, 2021 to January 4, 2022 and involved the administration of a digital questionnaire comprising two sections to all the employees. The first section includes questions related to the respondent's demographic and professional situation (gender, age, workplace, professional category, work functions, length of service, length of service in the same professional category, type of employment contract). The second section included the Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS) developed and validated by Siqueira [2]. This scale consists of 25 items and the answers were coded using a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Procedures of exploratory analysis and reliability analysis were used. Employees were aged between 28 and 66 years old, with an average age of 47.9 (SD = 8.5). As for length of service, by professional category, the average recorded was 9 years (SD = 7.5). Globally, the average length of service exceeds 36 years, however, the length of service varies from 1 to 43 years. The majority, 58.1% of respondents were female and 41.9% were male. In terms of professional category, the three most representative, with more than 10% of the answers, were: Auxiliary Professors (37.1%), Invited Assistant Professors (17.1%) and Technical Superior (11.4%). Taking into account the type of work function, the overwhelming majority was teacher (72.4%) from Health School (23.8%), Technology and Management School (22.9%), Agriculture School (21.0%) and Education School (18.1%). Finally, regarding the type of employment contract, it can be seen that the majority have an employment contract for an indefinite period or uncertain-term contract (64.8%). According to the results obtained, only 20% of employees were satisfied. The factors that most contributed to increase the level of satisfaction were: satisfaction with the nature of work (mean =4.6; SD = 1.0), satisfaction with colleagues (mean = 4.5; SD = 1.2) and satisfaction with managers (mean = 4.3; SD = 1.6). Factors such satisfaction with promotions (mean = 2.9; SD = 1.6) and satisfaction with salaries (mean = 3.2; SD = 1.6) were the ones that most contributed to the reduced level of job satisfaction (mean = 3.9; SD = 1.1).

References:
[1] A. E. Clark. “Job satisfaction and gender: why are women so happy at work?” Labour Economics, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 341-372, 1997.
[2] M. Siqueira. “Satisfação no trabalho” in Medidas do comportamento organizacional: Ferramentas de diagnóstico e gestão (M. Siqueira, Org.), pp. 257-266, Porto Alegre/Brazil: Artmed, 2008.

Keywords:

Job Satisfaction, Higher education, Public organizations, Human Resources.