Page 243 - rise 2017

The Relationship between Rewards Practices and Job Satisfaction: An Empirical Study in
Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN)

Norsalwati Mohd Razalli & Nur Farahin Afiqah Daud

Politeknik Nilai, Negeri Sembilan

sal010287@gmail.com

Abstract
Job satisfaction has been popular topic due to the consistent findings that both will improve
organizational effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between
rewards and job satisfaction among administrative staffs in Universiti Tenaga Nasional. Two broadly
hypothesized relationships were tested with a sample of 100 administrative staffs from 22 departments
that involved both campuses which are Putrajaya Campus and Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah Campus. The
results from Pearson Correlations revealed that job satisfactions significantly correlated with rewards
practices with UNITEN’s administrative staff. The latter regression analyses revealed that two
dimensions of reward practice, namely intrinsic and extrinsic rewards had direct relationship with job
satisfactions. The findings from this study will be useful for the Universiti Tenaga Nasional to design
strategies into strengthening their reward practices according to employees’ needs and requirements to
ensure their competitiveness in facing global competition.
Keywords: Job satisfaction, intrinsic reward, extrinsic reward, Universiti Tenaga Nasional

Introduction
The quality of work life experienced by employees in organizations has been an area of great interest for
practitioners and researchers (Sekaran, 1989). The concept of work satisfaction had a significant
importance in the social science literature for many years. Job satisfaction is central to the work lives of
employees and to the effective use of personnel within organisations (Foster 2000, Koeske et al 1994).
When satisfied at work, employees are likely to be more stable, productive and accomplished towards
organisational goals. According to research, human service workers who derive satisfaction from their
work are more committed and provide better services to their clients, than those who are dissatisfied
(Acker 1999). The 21st century organization faces many challenges but most important one is regarding
employee’s wellbeing. Employees spend most of their time at work but they are not completely satisfied
from their job that’s why satisfaction is not only important for employee’s wellbeing but also for
organization wellbeing.
From both anecdotal and research-based accounts, worker’s job satisfaction is a major concern for
management in many modern organizations (Westover & Taylor 2010; Westover et al 2010). Thus over
the past years, studies on job satisfaction have generated considerable interest among researchers
globally. This has further led to a debate as to what variables actually impact employees’ satisfaction
with their job, which in turn leads to improved productivity in work organizations. The purpose of the
study is to determine the relationship between the level of job satisfaction and job rewards as determinant
of job satisfaction.
Hence, Taber and Alliger (1995), for example, emphasized that to understand overall job attitudes,
researchers must examine the principal tasks and activities in which employees engage. Nevertheless, the
most accepted and common facets of job satisfaction are the satisfactions with pay, promotion
opportunities, coworkers, supervision, and the work itself (Smith et al 1969). These five job facets
typically account for a substantial amount of the variance in overall job satisfaction (Kinicki et al 2002).
Thus, since turnover appears to be a major issue for many organizations, and indeed a problem of
considerable importance because of the costs associated with hiring and training new personnel; rewards
are found to be the major drivers of job satisfaction for most countries (Westover & Taylor 2010). For
this reason also, the researcher would like to shed some lights in discovering the relationship job
satisfaction with dimension of the work.