Benefit flexibility and benefit satisfaction: does employee’s personality matter?
Abstract
Purpose
Although previous studies have analyzed the affective reaction of employees toward benefits, results remain inconclusive. The purpose of this paper is to pay specific attention to the flexibility of benefit systems and analyze whether the effect of this flexibility on employee’s benefit satisfaction is moderated by employees’ personality traits.
Design/methodology/approach
The data of this study have been collected from a sample of 874 employees working in Spanish firms, through survey. The data were analyzed using partial least squares modeling.
Findings
The results of this study show how self-efficacy has a negative moderating effect on the relation between benefit flexibility and benefit-level satisfaction. Similarly, the authors find a negative moderating effect of internal locus of control on the relationship between benefit flexibility and benefit determination satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
Future studies should consider other personality traits that have an even stronger moderating effect.
Practical implications
This paper sheds some light on how the flexibility of benefit systems can be an effective source of satisfaction and what kind of employees can be more satisfied with them. For human resource managers, it is necessary to know how differently employees react to human resource practices in order to be able to effectively adjust these practices to the appropriate employees.
Originality/value
This work contributes to human resource literature by analyzing some personality traits that may condition the effectiveness of benefit systems. In this sense, it responds to recent calls asking for more studies aimed at analyzing the role of the employees on the effectiveness of human resource practices.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Edenred SA for supporting the realization of this research. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education under Grants (ECO2012-31780), (ECO2010-20483); and the Regional Government of Andalusia under Grants (P11-SEJ-7988), (P10 SEJ-6765).
Citation
de la Torre-Ruiz, J.M., Vidal-Salazar, M.D. and Cordón-Pozo, E. (2017), "Benefit flexibility and benefit satisfaction: does employee’s personality matter?", Personnel Review, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 2-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-04-2015-0082
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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