Commentary on Job Satisfaction in the Social Care Sector in Greece: A Public - Nonprofit Sector Comparison

Periklis Polyzoidis^* and Charalampos Tsairidis
^*Correspondence: Dr. Periklis Polyzoidis, Department of Social Work, Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece, Email:

Description

The article uses the Job Satisfaction Survey [1,2] to measure job satisfaction among professionals working in social care institutions in Greece, and compares the results between the public and the non-profit sector. Job satisfaction is an important factor of success in any type of organization, let alone these of the social services sector, where personal interaction is the rule. Social care in Greece comprises a very complicated system, where public, private and nonprofit actors coexist and function in parallel on an ad hoc basis, without institutional coordination. Comparative approaches are necessary for understanding this complexity.

Despite the lack of consensus as to what job satisfaction is, differences in definitions are not significant and the do not affect the results, with few exceptions. The article adopts in general the definition of Porter and Lawer [3] which defines job satisfaction as the emotional reaction of the worker to his job as the result of the comparison between the real and the desired outcomes. Nevertheless, there are different attributes that determine job satisfaction, both monetary and non-monetary.

There is no unique tool that covers all aspects of job satisfaction. The article discusses the basic models that measure job satisfaction, and it explains why the use of the job satisfaction survey method is best for this occasion although it doesn’t include critical topics worthy of investigation such as overtime working, facilities, equipment, job autonomy, job rotation, secondment, shadowing, health and well-being, psychological support, over qualification, self-reported happiness at work, training opportunities or mobility. There is also a detailed analysis of the reasons why there is a strong need for measuring job satisfaction and a presentation of the existing measuring methods of it as well.

Data were collected through a questionnaire sent to 1,000 professional working in the fields of homeless, disabled, prisoners, and adolescents, aged, domestic violence, migrants/refugees, children, Roma, addictions, poverty/social exclusion and others.

There were 36 questions, the test for sampling adequacy or Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index of which is 0.887. Nine factors, composed by four questions each were created: Salary (Cronbach’s alpha 0.692), Promotion (0.678), Fringe benefits (0.622), Contingent rewards (0.802), Supervision (0.834), Co-workers (0.756), Nature of work (0.724), Communication (0.660), and Rules and procedures (0.632).

Analysis of variance shows that the five factors of salary (sig=0.459), fringe benefits (sig=0.291), supervisor (sig=0.215), nature of work (sig=0.051), and communication (sig=0.200) have no statistical significance, which means that job satisfaction is more or less equal in the public and the nonprofit sectors regarding these factors. On the other hand, the other four factors have statistical significance, namely, promotion (sig=0.002), contingent rewards (sig=0.019), co-workers (sig=0.008), and rules and procedures (sig <0.001). To test the sectorial differences between these factors, we applied the method of multiple comparisons and, more specifically, Hochberg’s GT2 test, because there are significant differences between the sizes of the samples of the public, private and nonprofit sectors for all four factors.

Conclusion

Satisfaction is higher in the public sector only regarding promotion, while satisfaction is higher in the nonprofit sector regarding contingent rewards, co-workers and rules and procedures. These results fit perfectly to the overall picture of the two sectors.

References

1. Porter, Lyman W and Richard M. Steers. "Organizational, Work, and Personal Factors in Employee Turnover and Absenteeism." Psychol Bull 80 (1973): 151-176.
2. Spector, Paul E. "Measurement of Human Service Staff Satisfaction: Development of the Job Satisfaction Survey." Am J Community Psychol 13 (1985): 693-713.
3. Spector, Paul E. “Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Causes, and Consequences.” Sage 3 (1997).