Are Romanian Employees Satisfied with Their Jobs, with the Performance Evaluation Process? An Empirical Analysis Among Employees from Public Versus Private Sector

Abstract

This paper investigates the differences in employees’ perceptions from the public and private sectors related to job satisfaction, its determinants, and also the satisfaction related to the performance evaluation process using empirical research based on the opinions of 301 employees from different sectors of activity. The paper aims to respond to the following key research questions: are there statistical differences concerning job satisfaction and also the perceptions regarding the performance evaluation process in public vs. private sector? Does the performance evaluation process has the same characteristics in different types of sectors and leads to the same level of satisfaction or, on the contrary, the discrepancies between the private and public sector are really high? In order to respond to these questions, descriptive statistics, non-parametric correlation, and non-parametric tests (Mann–Whitney) have been used. The empirical results revealed that the level of job satisfaction is higher in the public sector compared to the private sector, while Romanian employees tend to be more satisfied with the received salary in the private sector. Furthermore, employees from public sector considered the attractive benefit package, the good potential salary, and the perspective of hierarchical advancement as the engine to increase the overall level of work motivation. Concerning the level of satisfaction related to the last employee evaluations, it can be revealed that in both sectors, the analysis of superiors' opinion was the main method used in the employee evaluation, pointing out the relevance of work quality, and also the fact that the public sector employees appear to have a higher degree of satisfaction with the last evaluations compared to those from the private sector.