Organisational commitment and employee turnover at an Engineering faculty of a tertiary institution

Abstract

Over the past decade the face of the workplace has been faced with drastic changes initiating organisations to survive in a competitive global economy and severe working environments. One of the challenges faced by the organisations in the present day is discrimination in the workplace. The objective of this dissertation is to determine the extent to which perceived discrimination predicts/has an impact on job satisfaction, organisational commitment and employee turnover intention under staff at the Engineering Faculty.Using frequencies and descriptive statistics, the article provides an overview of the extent of the impact of perceived discrimination on job satisfaction, organisational commitment and employee turnover intention. Furthermore, the article evaluates the extent of the relationships between the aforementioned variables. Data collected from 45 respondents using electronic questionnaires was analysed using SPSS and Statistica. The results show that respondents have low levels of perception of discrimination. It also indicates that most respondents are satisfied with their work and their responses to the intention to leave the organisation is not high. Based on the descriptive statistics there is evidence of a relationship between perceived discrimination, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and employee turnover intention. We found that if the perception of discrimination is high it will lead to lower levels of organisational commitment and job satisfaction which will result to higher turnover intention of employees. We did however find that the perception of discrimination of the majority of the respondents, which were white and male, were less than that of other respondents. Furthermore it has been proven that perceived discrimination does have an influence on job satisfaction, organisational commitment and employee turnover intention of staff within the Faculty of Engineering. The study recommends that the management of the faculty adopts a focused approach to improve job satisfaction. In order to manage the perceptions of discrimination, it is recommended that the institution creates awareness and trains employees about diversity.