Organisational climate and employee job satisfaction in a government department.

Abstract

Organisations are constantly evolving and the importance of their human capital is

regularly brought to the fore. More and more companies are investigating issues

such as organisational climate and job satisfaction in an effort to find ways to

retain staff and increase productivity. However, this issue is not just limited to the

private sector. The public sector is also feeling the effects of low job satisfaction

among employees. One of the major contributing factors to employee happiness

is the organisational climate and the manner in which this is perceived by staff.

While research has been conducted in the private sector there is limited research

available on organisational climate in the public sector. The aim of this study was

to assess the organisational climate in a Government Department and to discover

if there is a link between organisational climate and employee job satisfaction.

The objectives were to identify the perceived nature of the organisational climate

in a Government Department, to identify the level of job satisfaction of employees

in the Department, to compare the employees’ perceptions of the organisational

climate to that of the managers and to identify those factors of organisational

climate which impacted most on employee job satisfaction. A questionnaire was

developed using QuestionPro and was distributed to employees of the

Department. Seventy employees responded. Overall it was found that there was

a negative perception of the organisational climate in the Department. In terms of

job satisfaction, the majority of employees indicated that they were dissatisfied.

However, it was found that managers were more satisfied with the organisational

climate than the junior staff. Overall it was found that there is a relationship

between organisational climate and employee job satisfaction. A number of

recommendations were developed such as team-building exercises and

recognition by managers of performance by staff, involve staff in decision making,

issues need to be resolved timeously, and performance assessment needs to

become less intimidating to deal with some of the issues identified. This study

was limited in that it only considered one department in KwaZulu-Natal.

Therefore, the results cannot be generalised to the public sector across South

Africa.