| dc.description.abstract | In a workplace, complaints, concerns and issues arise from time to time and it
is important that organizations have in a place an effective grievance handling
mechanism to help address such issues as may be raised by the employees. The aim of
this study was to assess the sources of employee grievances, the current procedures
for handling grievances and their relationship with employee job satisfaction in
selected Seventh-day Adventist institutions in Malawi. The study was a cross-sectional causal research design; 231 employees participated in the study from the
selected Seventh-day Adventist Church institutions. The instrument for data collection
was mainly questionnaire. The study used descriptive and inferential statistics to
generate results of the study. Data was collected using a 5-point Likert scale
questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS version 20 after it was checked for validity
and reliability. For the descriptive aspect, the data was used to calculate means and standard deviations. Correlations and regression analysis were used for inferential
statistics.
Based on the findings reported in the study, sources of employee grievances
are caused by factors such as communication, workload, working conditions, the
organizational culture and supervision. In addition, employees reiterated that
mistreatment in the workplace, favoritism, unfairness, intimidation, discrimination
and sexual harassment are common sources of employee grievances. The grievance
handling procedures existing in these institutions are generally effective. This means
that employees were aware of the grievance handling procedures. Also, dialogue and
passing time seems to be the strategies of resolving grievances in the selected
institutions. Another finding was that employee job satisfaction is positively
correlated with procedure awareness. However, the regression analysis results showed
that among the procedures in handling grievances, only ‘able to resolve grievances’
was a significant predictor of job satisfaction in the model (β = 2.037, p < .05).
Another finding was that employee job satisfaction is positively related with
supervision. Nevertheless, regression analysis result showed that among the sources
of grievances, only supervision was a significant predictor of employee job
satisfaction in the model (β8.065, < .05). Further, researches are recommended to
explore the area under study together with the other parts of the non-work-related
factors in non-faith based organizations. In particular, this study has dealt with the
sources of grievances; grievance handling procedures in Seventh-day Adventist
institutions. The same study can be done in other institutions and beyond the region
and the findings can be compared to find if there are better ways being practiced
elsewhere that can be shared and emulated. | en_US |
