Investigating job satisfaction of supervisors in the chrome industry

Abstract

This study is undertaken to investigate the effect job satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) has on the employees of Xstrata Alloys. Specifically, the focus falls on the supervisors employed at Xstrata’s Boshoek plant. The supervisors form the first line of management and therefore have the opportunity to influence the work force, be it intentionally or unintentionally, either positive or negative. It is the responsibility of every organisation to put measures in place to ensure a workforce of satisfied employees as the productivity and performance of the entire company could rest on this. This research study focuses on the quantitative method to obtain the necessary data. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) short form is specifically used in the collection of data for this study. A few interesting findings are evident: supervisors that have been in a certain line of work for longer periods of time, perceive themselves to experience less praise for jobs well done, whereas employees who have been appointed in supervisory positions for longer periods of time, have even lower levels of general satisfaction. The supervisors in the different departments are found to differ in their perceptions of certain job satisfaction items. Supervisors in the Admin and Production departments, harbour more positive feelings about some of the items than the supervisors in the Engineering department. A difference in perception is also noted between the supervisors with Afrikaans and other languages as home language, regarding their perception of some of the items of job satisfaction. It is recommended that future studies should focus on including the whole workforce, opposed to only the supervisors.