Job Tenure as Correlate of Job Satisfaction among North-west University Mafikeng Campus Employees

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between job tenure and satisfa ction among North- West University Mafikeng campus employees. Job tenure was operationalised as the period an employee has taken in the current work place (organization) and as working experience which is the cumulative number of years an employee has been on a professional career. This is predicated on the fact that job tenure has not received enough research attention as a determinant of job satisfaction like all other variables that have been isolated in the literature. The population of the study is all academic and support staff of North-West University Mafikeng campus. Forty employees were selected randomly from academic and support (non-teaching) employees to give a sample of 80. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and subjected to analysis using SPSS. Frequency count and percentages were used to describe the data, while t-test statistics was used to compare job satisfaction and job performance between categories of employees. Also a correlation was used to test for relationship between job tenure and job satisfaction. The results show that 33 percent of academic employees were between 46-55 years. The results on gender of the academic employees shows 80 percent were males; 65 percent were married, 58 percent had at least Masters Degrees. The result further shows that most of support employees 55 percent had stayed in the same institution for more than 15 years. The majority of support employees earn less than R250 000 whereas the majority of the academic employees are earning above R400 000 per annum. The results shows that there is significant difference in job satisfaction between support and academic employees (t = -2.48, p < 0.05). Significant determinants of job satisfaction of support employees were age (t = 1.76), work experience (t = -3.09), job tenure (t = 2.56) and income (t = 2.35). Significant determinants of job satisfaction of academic employees were job tenure (t = -2.32), work experience (t= 2.43), job position (t = 2.18) and type of employment (t = -2.12).