An investigation into job satisfaction and its influencing factors among staff members of Busogo Campus, University of Rwanda

Abstract

Like any other educational organizations, success of universities and higher learning institutions depends on the productivity of the staffs. Many studies agree that satisfied employees are highly productive, and outstanding organisations are the ones with highly satisfied individual employees. In tertiary education, most of the findings are about one category of staff specifically academic staffs while universities use also non-academic staff to achieve their goals. By integrating the above two categories of staffs, this study aims to investigate the job satisfaction and factors for which employees both in administrative and academic positions within Busogo campus are satisfied or dissatisfied with. This research adopted a mixed method to explore both intrinsic/motivator and extrinsic/hygiene factors of job satisfaction as well as the overall job satisfaction among staff members at Busogo campus. The target population was composed of all 106 staffs of Busogo campus as identified to be in service at the time of the study and 97 staff successfully completed the questionnaire used for data collection. For qualitative data, the researcher conducted an in-depth interview on a sample of 17 staffs purposively selected as key informants. The collected quantitative data were statically analysed upon the frequencies and percentages of responses while qualitative data were thematically analysed for easy interpretation that helped to support the quantitative findings. In general, when all dimensions of job satisfaction are taken into consideration, 59.69% of all staff members at Busogo campus have been found to be moderately satisfied. Data also indicated that staffs at Busogo campus are highly satisfied by motivator factors (67.53%) compared to hygiene factors (51.86%). The salary was ranked the first to have negatively influenced the job satisfaction (23.71%), followed by Company policies and administration (40.21%), Recognition (44.33%), Advancement (48.45%) and Working conditions (49.48%). Based on these results, the author recommended the University of Rwanda to organize and conduct such kind of research through all its colleges and campuses, and revise key aspects presenting red signs towards job satisfaction.