Submitted:
09 December 2024
Posted:
18 December 2024
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Abstract
This study aims to analyze the relationship between job satisfaction, career growth opportunities, and organizational culture. A qualitative approach was employed, utilizing a self-administered questionnaire as the primary data collection tool. The study was conducted among respondents from Samarkand, with data gathered from 39 participants. The collected data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The results of the ordinal regression analysis revealed that employment status, sense of belonging, and work-life balance were significantly and positively correlated with job satisfaction. In contrast, age, gender, and education level showed no significant or negative relationship with job satisfaction. These findings highlight the importance of organizational culture and specific employment factors in enhancing employee satisfaction and engagement.
Keywords:
Job Satisfaction
; Employee Engagement
; Organizational Culture
; Employment Status
; Work Stress
Introduction
These days, the world has formed its quality view along with globalization. However, there are many problems related to the satisfaction of workers, which should be solved to remain in the global situation (Salleh, 2016). Employee engagement is interpreted as perfect training in the workplace and self-knowledge in the work environment and is understood as the attitude and emotion towards the supervisor in the work environment (Koskinen, 2015). Attracting employees is explained by the presence of a team of employees at the workplace, establishing a sense of responsibility, the management relationship between the employee and the employer is the central point in the organization's performance. (Kazimoto, 2016). The notion of ‘employee satisfaction’ is becoming more and more popular and significant in the work environment nowadays (Uddin and Akhter, 2016).
Job satisfaction is a real concept and strategy that can make or break a company's growth. Employee engagement is a critical issue that has been debated not only globally but locally by experts and researchers. (Skroupa, 2016). Kampaso and Sridevi (2010) stated that employees who are satisfied with their work are highly engaged and emotionally committed to their work. It means that behind the agreement between the worker and the employer, the employer's success depends on the worker's love for his work. Moreover, employee satisfaction is not only a positive relationship with productive output but also a commitment to the goals of the organization to be sustainable (Salleh, 2016; Kazimoto, 2016). Overall, employee engagement is the best instrument for organizations to gain combative advantages and stay competitive (Rashid et al., 2011).
In the opinion of Gallup (2016) in the State of Global Workplace report, out of 142 countries, including Malaysia, 63 per cent of workers are not actively engaged, while 24 per cent are actively engaged. In these two different situations, disengaged employees are people who are almost completely unmotivated and do not work hard to achieve the organization's goals and objectives. Whereas actively disengaged workers are those who are not satisfied with their work and are ineffective in their work and at the same time hurt their co-workers as well. In addition, every country around the world is facing the problem of disengaged or dissatisfied workers, and Malaysia is one of those countries. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore are categorized as Asian countries to have among the highest percentages of disengaged workers in the world (Gallup, 2016). Gallup also stated that only 11 per cent of the employees in Malaysia are engaged, and 81 per cent and 8 per cent are regarded as disengaged and dissatisfied respectively.
Literature Review
Employee engagement is one of the burning issues on the minds of business people and it pushes us to a completely new type of management (Mizne, 2016). Maslach (2001) stated that we can regard engagement as an energy, involvement and inefficacy. In addition to this, other researchers characterized that engaged workers are usually highly productive and they are more likely to communicate with customers positively(Saks, 2006; Chalofsky, 2010). According to the survey, the working conditions are positive enough to perform better and hence they work effectively and efficiently (Robertson-Smith & Martwick, 2009). Furthermore, Young (2012) found a connection between employee engagement and productivity together with the organization’s performance. It gives the idea that organizational success to some extent depends on employee engagement. Evangeline and Ragavan (2016) stated that employee engagement is a commitment and emotional approach of an employee towards his organization or workplace.
The study examines the contribution of communication and employee engagement to the workplace within the creative industry. By the use of a mixed-method approach, interviews and surveys are combined for collecting information from a variety of organizations which are directed to foster togetherness along with defining key features and structure in the communication and job engagement methods that help to create a sense of belonging in the work environment. The job demands-resources model (JD-R) can explain the link between organizational culture and employee engagement, which means resources related to work are the most permanent and powerful drivers of work engagement (Bakker et al., 2011). “ The presence of job resources leads to engagement, while their absence can be triggered to a cynical attitude towards work” ( Bakker & Demerouti, 2007).
Critical factors of companies’ achievement is the promotion of inclusion within the workplace. In there, the word inclusion means creating a working place where all employees regard themselves as not only respected and valued but also equal to everyone in terms of succeeding (Shen et al., 2023).
There are no studies that have explored employee engagement and workplace culture can be dependent on other factors, like employment status, work-life balance, supervisor's feedback and recognition of hard work.
Data and Methodology
The study utilized ordinal regression analysis to examine the elements that influence job satisfaction by applying several variables, namely age, gender, educational level, employment status, work industry work-life balance, team environment, working recommendation, source providence, work expectation, group reliance, conflict resolution, colleague respecting, workplace improvement, recognition, work stress and daily working hours. The research examines employee job satisfaction and career growth opportunities in the organizational culture. The analysis used primary qualitative data gathered from a sample of 40 respondents through different fields, consisting of 80% females and 20% males. Data collection occurred onsite at Samarkand.
Table 1.
Demographic Information for Respondents.
| Gender | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Male | 7 | 17.5% |
| Female | 33 | 82.5% |
| 18-24 | 27 | 69.23% |
| 25-34 | 9 | 23.08% |
| 35-44 | 3 | 7.69% |
| High school | 5 | 12.8% |
| Bachelor’s degree | 14 | 35.9% |
| Master’s degree | 18 | 46.2% |
| Associate degree | 2 | 5.1% |
| Employed full-time | 7 | 17.9% |
| Employed part-time | 8 | 20.5% |
| Unemployed | 4 | 10.3% |
| Student | 19 | 48.7% |
Source: Authors' elaboration.
Overall, among 39 respondents, 82.05% of them were females, while 17.95% of them were males. It is clear from the pie chart that 56.41% of the participants were at the age of 18-24, 23.08% were 25-34, 12.82% people were under 18 compared to 7.69% of people who were 35-44.
Among the participants, the majority of them were masters with 46.15%, whereas the least one was associate degree with 5.13%. 36.90% of them had a bachelor’s degree and 12.82% of them were high school students.
According to a survey, 48.72% of participants were students. From them, part-time employees were 20.51%, while full-time employees were fewer with 17.95%. Employed respondents were 2.56% compared to unemployed people with 10.26%.
A theoretical model of the study is given in Equation (1)
JS = ß +αGender + α1Age + α2Education level + α3Employment Status+ α4Work industry α5Work-life balance + α6Team Environment + α7Supervisor Feedback + α8A group connection α9Work Stress + α10Source Providence + α11Work Recommendations + α12Work Expectation + α13 Group Reliance + α14 Conflict Resolution + α15Colleague Receptance + α16Workplace Improvement + α17Recognition+ α18Recommendation + α19Weekly working hours + ε
Where, β is constant; Gender stands for Gender of the respondents; Age shows Age group of respondents; Education Level represents Level of Education; Employment Status shows respondents’ Employment Status; Work industry stands for industries by which respondent work; Work-life balance represents satisfaction level of employees for life and work; Team Environment shows the level of communication in the team; Supervisor Feedback stands for the frequency of taken feedback from managers during the work; A group connection represents the level of sense belonging among the staffs; Work stress means the rate of stressed moments in the work environment; Source Providence represents respondents’ opinions on whether there is sufficient facilities for working effectively or not; Work Recommendation shows the probability that employees would (or would not) recommend working in their workplace; Work Expectation stands for the feeling of respondents expectancy for growth; JS is Job Satisfaction, shows the level of satisfaction on the workplace; Group Reliance means the level of trust and reliance on teammates for support; Conflict Resolution stands for observed people's opinion on the importance of dealing with conflicts; Colleague Receptance represents respondents’ respect on each other during their work life; Workplace Improvement represents respondents’ motives on factors that improve workplace environment; Recognition stands for feeling of being recognized for hard work and accomplishments; Weekly working hours shows the duration of working days to maintain the balance between work and life; α , α1 …. α19 are the coefficients of the independent variables; ε represents the error term.
Result
According to the ordinal regression, the employment status is statistically significant at 0.1 level, we accept Ha and reject H0 meaning that there is a positive relationship between the employment status and Job Satisfaction. If one unit increases in employment status, it leads to an increase in Job Satisfaction by 2.6 times.
Table 2.
Ordinal logistics regression model.
| Estimate | Sig. | ||
| Threshold | [JobSatisfaction = ] | -3,772 | ,296 |
| [JobSatisfaction = Dissatisfied] | -1,760 | ,616 | |
| [JobSatisfaction = Neutral] | ,858 | ,806 | |
| [JobSatisfaction = Satisfied] | 8,294 | ,040 | |
| Location | [Employment Status= ] | 6,191 | ,291 |
| [Employment Status=Employed full-time] | 3,675 | ,257 | |
| [Employment Status=Employed part-time] | 3,069 | ,305 | |
| [Employment Status=Student] | 6,361 | ,066 | |
| [Employment Status=Unemployed] | 0a | . | |
| [Worklifebalance=Excellent] | 3,300 | ,255 | |
| [Worklifebalance=Fair] | -2,039 | ,613 | |
| [Worklifebalance=Good] | -,442 | ,887 | |
| [Worklifebalance=Poor] | 0a | . | |
| [Sense Of Belonging=Neutral] | -6,477 | ,007 | |
| [Sense Of Belonging=Not very connected] | -3,130 | ,130 | |
| [Sense Of Belonging=Somewhat connected] | -1,645 | ,333 | |
| [Sense Of Belonging=Very connected] | 0a | . | |
| [Stress At Work=Always] | 5,264 | ,136 | |
| [Stress At Work=Never] | -1,078 | ,548 | |
| [Stressatwork=Often] | -4,462 | ,031 | |
| [Stressatwork=Rarely] | -4,684 | ,100 | |
| [Stress At Work=Sometimes] | 0a | . | |
| [Feedback=Always] | 1,443 | ,563 | |
| [Feedback=Never] | -1,147 | ,740 | |
| [Feedback=Often] | -3,117 | ,055 | |
| [Feedback=Rarely] | 6,929 | ,090 | |
| [Feedback=Sometimes] | 0a | . | |
| [Age=18-24] | 3,178 | ,153 | |
| [Age=25-34] | ,256 | ,906 | |
| [Age=35-44] | -1,462 | ,715 | |
| [Age=Under 18] | 0a | . | |
| [Gender=Female] | ,411 | ,808 | |
| [Gender=Male] | 0a | . | |
| [EducationLevel=Associate degree] | 5,816 | ,142 | |
| [EducationLevel=Bachelor's degree] | ,128 | ,950 | |
| [EducationLevel=High school] | 0a | . | |
| [EducationLevel=Master's degree] | 0a | . | |
Source: estimated in SPSS software.
The sense of belonging is statistically significant at 0.05 level, we accept Ha and reject HO meaning that there is a negative relationship between the sense of belonging and Job Satisfaction. If one unit increases in sense of belonging, it leads to an increase in Job Satisfaction by 3.4 times.
The work-life balance is statistically significant at 0.1 level, we accept Ha and reject HO meaning that there is a positive relationship between work-life balance and Job Satisfaction. If one unit increases in work-life balance, it leads to increased Job Satisfaction by 4.1 times. The stress at work is statistically significant at 0.1 level, we accept Ha and reject HO meaning that there is a negative relationship between stress and Job Satisfaction. If one unit increases in stress at work, it leads to increased Job Satisfaction by 2 times.
The trust and reliance are statistically significant at 0.1 level, we accept Ha and reject HO meaning that there is a positive relationship between trust and reliance and Job Satisfaction. If one unit increases in trust and reliance, it leads to increased Job Satisfaction by 2.5 times.
The age, gender, and education level are statistically insignificant, we accept HO, meaning that there is no relationship between age, gender and job satisfaction.
Conclusion
From the discussion above it could be concluded that the research study has shed light on the main roles of certain workplace factors and innovation strategies on employee job satisfaction and career advancement within an organization. Using ordinal regression analysis, we have revealed valuable insights into which factors are vital and which are not important to employee job satisfaction and engagement along with the challenges and opportunities that are causing job dissatisfaction. The findings and results of this study show that employment status, work-life balance and sense of belonging can have a positive effect on the growth of job satisfaction within the organization. The implications of these results extend beyond the confines of this survey, emphasizing the imperative for continued exploration of the other factors that may influence future employee engagement and job satisfaction.
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