Recruitment and Employee Retention

¶ … job satisfaction among Saudi nurses: Impact on recruitment and retention Assessing Job Satisfaction among Saudi Arabian Nurses: Impact on Recruitment and Retention The importance of nurses' job satisfaction can be assessed in accordance with its implication on health care quality, national workforce situation, but also with management practices. One of the most important implications refers to Saudi Arabian nurses' job satisfaction impact on recruitment and retention practices.

This research proposal advances a model for assessing job satisfaction and its relationship with nurses' decision to stay on the job or search for more satisfactory jobs elsewhere. In addition to this, the research proposal focuses on how hospital managers can be interviewed in order to provide significant insight on best practices regarding recruitment and retention in the nursing field.

Contents Background of the Study Purpose of the Study Problem Statement Research Objectives Research Questions Limitations of the Study Significance of the Study Literature Review Theoretical framework Research hypotheses Research Methodology Study Plan APPENDIX A APPENDIX B Reference list Background of the Study Organizations in the public and private fields rely their success and performance on technical, financial, and human resources. Each resource plays an important role in implementing their strategy and provides certain types of benefits.

Human resources represent the most important resource that organizations make use of in their attempt to reach their objectives. It is important to focus on employees' job satisfaction as this is an important factor that affects productivity, costs, and organizational practices. This area is of great importance to the Saudi Arabian nursing field because of the implication it has on the quality of health care. This aspect should represent the focus of governmental practices, but also of those of hospital managers.

The extensive research in the field provides important information on assessing Saudi Arabian nurses' job satisfaction and its impact on recruitment and retention. The information provided by several research studies somewhat differs and there is the need for more substantiation. Purpose of the Study This study will assess job satisfaction among Saudi nurses and its impact on recruitment and retention. Problem Statement In Saudi Arabia, nursing care is delivered mainly by expatriate nurses who contribute to about 70% of the nursing workforce in the Ministry of Health hospitals.

This percentage even reaches 96% in the private sector (Almalki et al., 2011). However, recently efforts have been deployed by the Saudi government to retain nurses as a strategy to increase the number of Saudi nurses in nursing profession. Every year, hundreds of Saudi nurses graduate from nursing schools and join the workforce in primary health care centers, secondary hospitals, and up to tertiary hospitals across the country. Yet, it has been a persistent challenge to the Saudi government to meet the demands of nursing care.

Additionally, there is evidence of high nursing job torn over among Saudi nurses (Gieter et al., 2011). Literature suggests that job dissatisfaction is identified as one recurrent factor -- among numerous factors - of intention to leave nursing profession and shown to negatively impact both recruitment and retention of Saudi nurses (Currie and Hill, 2012). In the Saudi context, little has been revealed in the literature about this issue which sets the door wide open to better understand the problem and accordingly suggest solutions. Research Objectives 1.

To identify factors contributing to Saudi nurses job dissatisfaction. 2. To assess nurses' satisfaction on overall level but also regarding different aspects of their work. 3. To develop strategies intended to enhance the number of Saudi nurses in the health care workforce as well as minimize the rate of Saudi nurses turnover. Research Questions 1. Are Saudi nurses satisfied with their nursing career? 2.

Does the level of job satisfaction indicate the intent to leave nursing career among Saudi nurses? Limitations of the Study The study aims to investigate job satisfaction levels among Saudi Arabian nurses in three hospitals. Although research questions, hypotheses, and questionnaire are designed in accordance with previous research, the sample of this study cannot be considered representative for the entire population of nurses in Saudi Arabia.

Therefore, the study's limitations determined by its sample size recommend that the study is used in reinforcing or challenging existing areas previously addressed by other studies, and in addressing less studied issues that influence the relationship between nurses' job satisfaction and hospital managers' recruitment and retention practices. Significance of the Study As mentioned above, the limited sample size that this research proposal relies on doe not allow for national level extrapolation.

The significance of the study refers to its attempt to investigate areas less addressed by previous studies and to provide information for further research on national level regarding the impact of certain recruitment and retention practices on Saudi Arabian nurses' job satisfaction levels. In other words, the study intends to validate or invalidate certain hypotheses that can provide important information in analyzing how nurses' job satisfaction levels can be improved and how it can determine efficient recruitment and retention processes.

Literature Review Nursing turnover has been an ongoing concern to health care professionals over the past few decades. Researchers have made sincere efforts in their endeavor to uncover the mystery behind its existence as well as the contributing factors to its persistence. One major consequence of nursing turnover persistence across all levels of health care nowadays is the global nursing shortage (Laureen et al., 2012; Sara et al., 2011).

As nursing turnover refers to the actual physical departure of nursing profession and/or health care organization, efforts have been made to investigate its predictors to set the door open for policy makers and administrators to accordingly come up with evidence-based solutions. The intention to leave nursing profession has been a major determinant around which studies addressing nursing turnover had revolved. In a cross-sectional descriptive study done at King Faisal University hospital in al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, Zaghloul, A et al.

(2008) described staff nurses' job satisfaction in relation to their intention to leave. He identified reasons for staff nurse intention to stay in nursing - in addition to salary -- as hospital policies, yearly bonuses, fairness of performance appraisal, and opportunities for achievement recognition. In another cross-sectional study in 2005 from 1636 registered nurses working in hospitals, Genevieve and Denis (2010) studied nurses' burnout in light of the balance between nurses' job demands ( e.g. workload, work stress, work interference with family life) and resources (e.g.

support from colleagues and supervisor, recognition, competence, decision making, and authority). They concluded that as job demands exceed the accessible resources, nurses were likely to consider the intention to leave the profession. Defining Job Satisfaction Job satisfaction was defined as an overall feeling about the job or as a related constellation of attitudes about various aspects or facets of the job (Hong Lu et al., 2012).

Job satisfaction has been a recurrent predictor of nurse intention to leave nursing profession (Sara et al., 2011).Further, in a recent systematic review done by Hong Lu et al. (2012) they emphasized the need for more research to better understand the importance of the many identified factors relating to job satisfaction of hospital nurses. Among those factors, nursing working condition emerged as a major factor which needs to be improved in order to increase the level of job satisfaction in nursing professionals. Roelen et al.

(2013) reported an association between higher episodes of sickness absence and job satisfaction and highlighted the need for more robust instruments to measure nurse tendency to be satisfied with his/her job. Additionally, Judy (2010) explored job correlation between job satisfaction and workload which was expressed in terms of increase of feelings of workload stress.

And she recommended hospital administrators to decrease nurses' workload In order to understand the concept of job satisfaction, how it can be assessed, and its implications on personnel recruitment and retention it is important to agree on some of the most frequently used definitions of job satisfaction. Hoppock (1935) defines job satisfaction as the combination of psychological, physiological and environmental factors that determine employees to consider themselves satisfied with their job. In other words, job satisfaction is affected by a series of internal and external factors.

Spector (1997) defines job satisfaction as employees' liking or disliking different aspects of their jobs, such as their workplace environment, relationships with peers and superiors, pay scale, nature of work, schedule, and others. In accordance with this approach, employees can manifest job satisfaction in some of their job's aspects, and dissatisfaction in others. Another theory is expressed by Vroom (1964) and refers to job satisfaction defines as affective orientations from the individual towards the roles he is expected to play at work.

An interesting theory that describes job satisfaction is proposed by Davis et al. (1985) and is considered being the positive and negative feelings combination expressed by employees on their work. What this theory brings in addition to other theories is the relationship between job satisfaction and the level on which employees' expectations are met by their job. One of the theories that consider job satisfaction an intrinsic value is that developed by Kaliski (2007). In accordance with this theory, job satisfaction is represented by employees' sense of achievement.

Although this is influenced by internal factors, job satisfaction is acknowledged externally by recognition, pay scale, promotions, and others. It is considered to have a direct influence on productivity. A similar theory is proposed by Statt (2004) and associates job satisfaction with employees' level of content with the rewards they receive at work. Most definitions on job satisfaction, such as that developed by Armstrong (2006), focus on employees' positive and negative feelings towards different aspects of their job.

Each of these definitions can be successfully applied in assessing Saudi Arabian nurses' job satisfaction. In this case, the research refers to identifying the level at which Saudi Arabian nurses rate their overall job satisfaction, but also satisfaction with several aspects of their work.

The general aspect provides an idea on how nurses feel about their job, and specific aspects reveal areas where nurses are satisfied, meaning the organization is managing them in an appropriate manner, and areas where nurses are not satisfied, allowing organizations to identify the factors that require additional effort for improvement. It is expected that the main areas that should be addressed are: the nature of nurses' work, compensation and benefits, attitudes towards superiors, relationships with coworkers, and promotion opportunities.

Job Satisfaction Impact on Retaining and Recruiting Employees The importance of job satisfaction can be analyzed directly on employees' productivity but also on organizations' efforts in retaining existing personnel and recruiting new ones. Reduced levels of job satisfaction have been identified to determine lack of employees' loyalty, increased levels of absenteeism, reduced productivity, tardiness, strikes, high employee turnover rate, negative behavior, and others. Organizations where employees report low job satisfaction have problems retaining their key staff.

Employees dissatisfied with their working conditions often quit their jobs in order to be hired by other organizations that are considered to offer more rewarding conditions. Therefore, job satisfaction has a significant influence on retaining employees. The link between job satisfaction and loyalty levels has been reported by research in the field, such as the project developed by Vanderberg and Lance (1992). During this research 100 employees were monitored in order to determine how their job satisfaction levels influenced their loyalty towards the company they worked for.

The research has revealed how higher job satisfaction is reflected by higher employee loyalty. The study has also addressed the effects of low job satisfaction. It has been observed that job satisfaction is in inverse relationship with employee absenteeism: when job satisfaction is high, absenteeism is low, when job satisfaction is low, absenteeism is high. However, specialists draw attention to the fact that increasing job satisfaction might not necessarily determine reduced absenteeism levels, but job satisfaction is considered to directly influence high absenteeism.

This is a matter of concern to health care providers in Saudi Arabia, as nurses' absenteeism could determine several problems in addition to higher costs that this situation produces for any organization. Saudi Arabian Nurses' Job Satisfaction The job satisfaction levels of Saudi Arabian nurses have been addressed by several researchers. A research study developed by Al-Dossary, Vail and Mcfarlane took place in 2012 in a Saudi Arabian university teaching hospital with the objective of measuring nurses' job satisfaction and determining the factors that influence it.

In this case a cross sectional quantitative method was used. The sample was represented by 189 nurses that were self administered a questionnaire. In order to analyze the data, researchers used SPSS and several tests to determine relationships between variables and to test hypotheses. The study revealed that nurses were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with their jobs. Satisfaction was reported in areas like supervision, coworkers and nature of work. Factors of dissatisfaction were pay, fringe benefits, contingent rewards and operating conditions.

In accordance with this study, Saudi Arabian nurses in the university teaching study require increased salaries and bonuses for the extra duties they perform at work. In addition to this, training programs and education is another factor that is likely to encourage nurses' job satisfaction. Another factor of great importance on job satisfaction that is studied by researchers is represented by stress and how stress factors influence employees' satisfaction with their work.

The impact of stress on job satisfaction was assessed in the case of nurses in King Fahad Specialist Hospital Dammamm KSA. The objective of this research is to identify the main stressors that affect nurses in this hospital and their influence on job satisfaction. Researchers used a descriptive correlation cross sectional method. The sample was represented by more than 200 nurses. Several stressors were identified through the study (Saleh et al., 2013). Most of them are related to the nature of their work.

It is less likely to consider that hospital managers could do something to change this. If the nature of work is a source of dissatisfaction for some of the nurses, this might reflect the fact that they are in the wrong line of business. In order words, nurses in this situation should reassess their career choice in accordance with their needs, desires and values. However, the study revealed that several stress factors play an important role in Saudi Arabian nurses' job satisfaction level.

Although hospital managers have little to do when it comes to improving stress factors determined by the nature of their work, there are other factors that produce stress and that can be improved. It is recommended that managers increase their efforts in reducing stress, absenteeism and turnover, while increasing job satisfaction.

Another strategy that can be successfully used in order to address Saudi Arabian nurses' reduced levels of job satisfaction as a result of stress is to empower them by allowing them to participate in problem solving and decision making processes. Job stress was even further studied by Yu-Mei and Yuhsuan (2012) in regional hospitals in Northern Taiwan and concluded to be significantly predicted by marital status and working tenure. They reported that especially the inexperienced and married nurses experienced greater depression and stress,.