The importance of keeping employees satisfied.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between three antecedents, namely, work self-determination, managerial support (i.e. interpersonal motivation style) and person-organization fit (P-O) (i.e. shared values among employees and the overall organization) on employee work satisfaction in a French Canadian health care context. Assessing the relationships between such intrapersonal, interpersonal and macro-level variables will help to better comprehend work satisfaction in health care and shed light on applicable transformations for management.

Design/methodology/approach: The study tested a judicious model grounded in self-determination theory in order to capture and construe the three levels of influence. Participants were recruited from four health centers in the Suroît (Quèbec, Canada) region. Management was provided with the questionnaire and asked to distribute to all employees including nurses and allied health. A serial multiple mediation analysis was used to test the proposed model.

Findings: The findings revealed that nearly 60 percent of the participants from each of the professional groups reported feeling moderately to not at all satisfied with their job (follow-up ANOVA revealed that nurses were the least satisfied). Through closer examination, the findings revealed that 46 percent of the variance in reported job satisfaction was explained by the three focal antecedents from the hypothesized model (work self-determination, managerial support and P-O fit). Therefore the model, in its entirety, represents a comprehensive perspective for influencing employee work satisfaction in particularly demanding health care work contexts.

Originality/value: The study is the first to indicate the prevailing factors necessary to pursue and support employee satisfaction within a health care context among French Canadians.