How to make employees happy: Evidence from Thai university lecturers

Abstract

Ensuring workers’ job satisfaction could help an organization maintain professional staff and achieve high productivity. Based on this evidence, many firms have tried to evaluate some specific factors which can influence job satisfaction among their employees so that they can appropriately issue new working policies to promote a better working environment. In this regard, the main objective of this paper was to investigate how salary, workload, work-family conflict, job stress, and burnout influence job satisfaction among university lecturers in Thailand. To achieve this aim, the study elaborated on a Google survey form to collect data from 450 lecturers from different universities around Thailand; the study reached a valid response rate of 86%. The results revealed that job stress, salary, workload, and work-family conflict significantly affect job satisfaction, while burnout has an insignificant impact. In comparison, job stress (β = –0.47) is the most decisive factor in job satisfaction. Salary (β = 0.31) is the second-largest factor influencing job satisfaction; workload (β = 0.30) is the third factor influencing job satisfaction. Last, work-family conflict (β = –0.23) has the most negligible impact on job satisfaction. Therefore, job satisfaction attitudes among university lecturers rely mainly on their stress level; thus, this study highly recommends that all related universities develop a new working policy to minimize job stress among lecturers. AcknowledgmentThis study is supported by Research and Innovation Institute of Excellence, Walailak University under grant number WU66217.