Abstract

This study examined age, gender, motivation, organisational commitment, and spirituality as predictors of job satisfaction among university workers in Ekiti State. The descriptive research design of the ex-post facto type was adopted for this study. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the participants across the main staff of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti. The study consists of 200 participants, comprising 80 males and 120 female staff. The instrument used to collect data was divided into five sub-sections (organisational commitment, worker motivation, workplace spirituality, and job satisfaction scales): The data was collected and analysed using the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression to test the research questions at the 0.05 significant level. Work motivation (r =-.239**, p<0.05); organisational commitment (r =-.272**, p<0.05); gender (r =-.183**, p<0.05); age (r =-.155*, p<0.05) and spirituality (r =.064, p<0.05) positively correlated with job satisfaction of the university staff. There was a significant combined effect of the independent variables (age, gender, work motivation, organisational commitment, and spirituality) on job satisfaction. The result yielded a coefficient of multiple regressions R of .408, multiple R-square = .166 and Adjusted R square of.451. This suggests that the five factors when combined accounted for 45.1% (adj. R2=.451) variation in the prediction of job satisfaction among the staff of the studied university in Ekiti State. The most potent factors were organisational commitment (Beta = -.259, t=-3.823, p<0.05); work motivation (Beta = -.214, t=-3.041, p<0.05) and age (Beta = -.158, t=-1.853, p>0.05) while gender and spirituality are not a potent predictor factors of job satisfaction in this study. For an organisation to be successful, its managers should focus on increasing the employees’ job satisfaction through factors such as the work itself, benefit programmes, rewards, work conditions, and promotions. These can influence the way a person feels and perceives their jobs. Indeed, managers may also apply job rotation so each employee will have the opportunity to perform different tasks using various skills and talents. Managers might also decide to make use of a rewarding system to recognise those employees who perform their jobs well.