Employee satisfaction as a catalyst for improved efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction

Abstract

This research will focus on employee satisfaction in the workplace. The research will be conducted as a result of the high number of factory staff resigning due to unhappiness in their work environment. This transposes into not only productivity being lost, but also that the efficiency of the organisation is being compromised. The purpose of this research is to establish if employee satisfaction could serve as a catalyst for improved efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction.The research will be conducted at Anchor Lining Systems (ALS). The company is based in Cape Town South-Africa and manufactures a concrete protection liner referred to as Anchor Knob Sheet (AKS). The product represents a „state of the art‟ robust concrete protection liner system. It is designed to protect concrete structures in chemically aggressive environments.The research question which will be researched to mitigate the research problem reads as follows: “What approach could be deployed to minimise employee dissatisfaction in a manufacturing organisation to improve its overall efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction?”Applied research will be conducted in this thesis, as the research will be designed to apply its findings to solve a specific, existing problem. The research will furthermore fall in the social world as social science has to do with how things are, and why. The research, due to the fact that it would require intensive textual investigation will be theoretical in nature, which can be define as, “contemplative of the mind, on intellectual faculties”. Furthermore, theoretical research is commonly associated with the phenomenological paradigm, which is used to answer questions about the complex nature of a phenomena, often with the purpose of describing and understanding the phenomena from the participant‟s view. These concepts are also commonly referred to as the „qualitative paradigm‟.The proposed research in this dissertation would be of specific benefit to the manufacturing industry in South-Africa, due to the high levels of staff turnover being experienced in the industry due to employee dissatisfaction. Such high levels of turnover de-stabilises the industry in that key resources are lost to organisations. If turnover can be minimised by elevating the levels of employee satisfaction then efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction can be exponentially improved.