Job satisfaction of millennials at a selected manufacturing company

Abstract

One of the challenges of the $21^{\text { st }}$ century organisation, is to satisfy and retain their valuable human capital. This comes with the territory of competing in a global market combined with technology making it easy for employees to seek and find interesting new opportunities to exploit. Millennials will dominate the workforce by 2020. It seems that most aspects of the lives of Millennials are integrated with technology. Technology in turn gave Millennials unique preferences in social as well as work related factors, such as communication. Organisations need to investigate and adapt in order to recruit and retain millennial employees. The aim of this study was to investigate the level of job satisfaction amongst Millennial employees of a selected company and identify specific factors (positive and negative) of influence on their job satisfaction. From knowledge gained and insights from literature, the study further aimed to make recommendations towards a more effective retention strategy. A quantitative research approach was followed, with a cross-sectional design. The Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire was applied to gather information on the level of Millennial's job satisfaction and their preference at a selected company in Florida Hills, Gauteng, South Africa. A convenience sample of fifty Millennials at the selected company of study was identified and forty-six responded (N=46). The results indicated a high level of satisfaction amongst the selected company's Millennial employees, with a slightly higher intrinsic satisfaction than extrinsic satisfaction. Activity, co-workers, security, supervision-technical and independence were amongst the positive work related factors and advancement, compensation and authority amongst the negative factors. Literature on retention strategies were investigated and knowledge gained from results on job satisfaction were applied to make recommendations towards enhanced millennial satisfaction and retention strategy.