Measuring the job satisfaction of young engineers at Eskom power stations

Abstract

At the time of writing, South African electricity parastatal Eskom was losing critical skills at an alarming rate at a time in which it battled to supply the country’s energy demand (Grindrod, 2008). With electricity demand forecasted to double in the next two decades, the power giant could ill afford loss of experienced engineers (DOE, 2013). With this in mind, the author informally noticed a general lack of job satisfaction amongst Eskom’s young engineers, specifically those working at power stations. Since employees’ intention to leave an organisation is directly related to their job satisfaction (Pretorius, 2012), a measure of the job satisfaction levels of these young engineers was necessitated. This study thus set out on determining the level of job satisfaction of young engineers working on Eskom’s power stations, with the aim of providing management with the knowledge to bring along changes that will increase the job satisfaction of their employees and prevent further loss of critical skills. A total of 48 engineers within the target population successfully participated in the research. The Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire short form was used to determine the levels of intrinsic, extrinsic and general job satisfaction of the sample, while the Job Descriptive Index was administered to identify specific job facets that played a role in the satisfaction levels. The multitrait-multi-matrix method (Gillet & Schwab, 1975) was utilised to successfully prove convergent and discriminant validity of the research instruments. The results showed a significant lack of job satisfaction for Eskom’s young engineers working at power stations. They did not experience intrinsic job satisfaction which led to a lack of general satisfaction. A lack of creativity, routine work, limited opportunities for promotion and internal company politics gave effect. They did however experience moderate extrinsic job satisfaction, especially with regards to remuneration.