Aspects of Workers satisfaction within the South African Construction Industry - some empirical observations

Abstract

The construction industry is characterised by a lack of sustainable employment of its workers leading to a loss of knowledge capital and skills of senior workers and the failure to attract younger workers. Despite the existence of a range of intervention strategies used to assess the satisfaction derived by workers from various industries, little research has been undertaken to examine if these interventions can be applied to the South African Construction Industry. Thus the noted omission has been the motivation for this research project. The main aims of this paper are twofold; firstly, to identify the major variables affecting the relative aspects of work within the South African Construction Industry, secondly to compare how the satisfaction derived from work differs across the young and older workers. Through a survey of 65 South African workers within the Construction Industry, this study empirically refines and validates the 6 variables for measuring work satisfaction in the South African Construction. The study reports on the operational framework of the Relative Aspects of Worker Satisfaction Assessment Model (RAWSAM), which can be used to examine the levels of satisfaction factors relating to productivity. The findings indicate that the RAWSAM is reliable, valid and undimensional. This paper concludes by presenting the refined instrument which contributes to the productive intervention improvement tools and techniques as advocated within the literature and contributes to the organisation behaviour literature by validating the direct and indirect relations among the relative work aspects on productivity. The findings could be used to develop an improved quality of life model whose impact could be evaluated longitudinally in subsequent years.