Total Rewards and Its Influence on Job Satisfaction and Organisational Commitment in Higher Education

The shortage of academic staff and the inability of higher education institutions to attract and retain highly qualified talent are critical problems in tertiary education. With the aim of addressing these issues, this article investigates the relationship between total rewards, job satisfaction and organisational commitment in higher education institutions in South Africa. A survey design was used in the study that was conducted. The systematic sampling technique was used to obtain the sample (N = 279) from two universities of technology. The measuring instruments used were the Total Rewards Questionnaire based on the World at Work Total Rewards Model, the Job Satisfaction Survey and the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire. Using the SPSS 24 and AMOS 24 software programs, structural equation modelling (SEM) was performed to analyse the data set. The results revealed that some elements of total rewards had a strong relationship with job satisfaction and organisational commitment among academic staff. The contribution of this study was to enhance the comprehension of existing literature on the relationship between the predictor variables (total rewards elements), job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The findings provided evidence that total rewards played a major role in influencing both job satisfaction and organisational commitment in higher education institutions. Therefore, the rewards specialists in universities of technology could apply a total rewards system to maintain, or even promote, academics’ job satisfaction and organisational commitment.