Impact of Work Climate and Workers' Satisfaction in COBA SA in Portugal

Abstract

The Work Climate represents the perception that workers have of the way a company offers the right conditions for them to develop their work in the best way. A positive organizational climate drives and sustains employee satisfaction and high performance. This investigation, supported by a questionnaire, presents a case study to workers at a COBA company, that is a world leader in the production of wires used in the car wiring harness, intending to understand their work climate and propose improvement measures.Although the overall classification of the Work Climate and the Worker Satisfaction in COBA is quite good, still exists opportunities for improvement. Our findings suggest that from the three dimensions, namely Safety, Hygiene and Health Conditions at Work, Motivation and Work Organization, considered in the Work Climate, only the first two dimensions influence the Worker Satisfaction. Motivation is the variable that most strongly predicts the perception of worker satisfaction.This study also reveals that the sociodemographic profiles are a key factor to consider, as the relationships between work climate dimensions and worker satisfaction vary across workers segments.No differences were found in the satisfaction of the workers related to age and contract type. On the other hand, workers, male, divorced, with more children, with a lower educational level, with less tenure and the ones that work in shifts, reported lower perception of the work climate and are less satisfied.