Factors affecting job satisfaction in Turkish forestry

Abstract

Achieving job satisfaction of employees in today’s forestry is an undeniable fact in terms of successful resource management. This study aims at examining the most significant factors affecting job satisfaction in Turkish forestry. Two different questionnaires were applied to 496 interviewees from two different interest groups associated with the forestry section of the Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs in the nine geographical regions of Turkey. People to be interviewed were determined using the layered-simple random sampling method. The obtained data were evaluated via descriptive statistics, and also, whether the ideas of the interviewees related to the most significant factors affecting the job satisfaction differ according to the regions, the units studied, the task and the experience were inspected by the Kruskal-Wallis H Test. The different groups were determined via the Duncan Test. Accordingly, the vast majority of interviewees identified “unfair and incompetent personnel policy” and “political pressures” as the most significant factors affecting the work efficiency in the Forestry Organization. On the other hand, the majority of employees are satisfied from their works and they think “the feeling to be useful to the community” as the most important factor affecting job satisfaction. Similarly, the majority of employees have “medium level” satisfaction with the wages they receive and they are open to share their opinions on issues related to forestry. Also, most of the interviewees have the idea that the management and inspection mentality which is far from political, social and administrative pressures will increase the job satisfaction. Likewise, 75% of employees feel unsafe in any legal inquiry about the task. All these negativities were revealed and interpreted as factors reducing job satisfaction and so success. According to these results, some suggestions were developed towards increasing job satisfaction.