A Quantitative Study of the Correlation between Supervisors’ Relationships within a Multigenerational Workforce and Job Satisfaction

Abstract

Higher education leaders fail to recognize an employee’s job satisfaction is affected by their supervisor’s awareness of generational needs, resulting in the problem of decreased employee retention and associated costs. The purpose of this quantitative nonexperimental study was to determine if a supervisor’s awareness of generational needs of faculty affected job satisfaction while factoring in the supervisor and faculty member’s workforce cohort and the supervisor’s level of participation in a core professional development series. Both the Generational Theory and Herzberg’s Two-Factor (Motivation-Hygiene) Theory provided the framework for this study. Three research questions focused on analyzing the awareness of supervisors and faculty members’ multi-generational needs and job satisfaction. Participants included supervisors and faculty, contingent and full-time, from a large community college district in the Southwest. Data were collected using the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS). Descriptive statistics and ANOVA tests were used to measure the influence of multigenerational interaction on job satisfaction. The findings indicated there were no statistically significant differences regarding multigenerational interaction impacting job satisfaction. Recommendations for practice include faculty and supervisors stop blaming issues on generational interaction and supervisors focusing energies on their faculty based upon other qualities unrelated to generational interaction. Further research is needed to investigate whether the increased technology divide impacts job satisfaction.