ABSTRACT

              Abstract

                   The concept of permanent employees working within an enterprise is increasingly being challenged and largely substituted with contract workers in Nigeria. Job insecurity, poor employment benefits and lack of career progression are some of the issues of concern to trade unions. Studies have documented the use of contract workers on the surface to attract higher profits for employers; however, the consequences of using contract workers alongside permanent employees in the same organisations are yet to be adequately addressed in Nigeria. This study therefore examined the influence of nature of employment on job satisfaction and commitment in deposit money banks in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study was guided by Adams equity theory and adopted a descriptive and cross-sectional survey research design. Non-probability sampling procedure via purposive, convenience and snowball sampling techniques were used to select Six hundred and sixty contract and permanent employees from four deposit money banks with high prevalence of contract workers in Lagos State, Nigeria. Two standard instruments were used to collect quantitative data. They were short form of Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire developed by Weiss; and Dawis, England and Lofquist (1967) (MSQ) r=.70; Allen and Meyer (1990) Affective r= .44 and Continuance Commitment (ACC) r=.52 scale. Eight key informant interviews were conducted among purposively selected Heads of Operations and Human Resource Managers, while sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted among purposively selected permanent employees who were once contract workers in the banks. The quantitative data collected were analysed using Two-Way Analysis of Variance with inferences drawn at 0.05 significant levels, while content analysis was used for the qualitative data.Results showed that the main and interaction effect of deposit money banks and the nature of employment on job satisfaction was not significant {F (3, 628) = 1.94; p > 0.05, r = .50}, but the main and interaction effect of deposit money banks and the nature of employment on job commitment {F (3, 628) = 14.85; p < 0.05, r = 1.00} was significant.The nature of employment and the deposit money banks have significant effect on the level of job commitment, except job satisfaction. Therefore, the management should improve the working conditions of contract workers and treat both permanent and contract employees equitably, based on the tasks performed, job positions occupied (job contents) and academic qualification obtained so as to enhance their levels of job satisfaction and commitment in the Nigeria deposit money banks.

                    Keywords: Banks, Commitment; Employment Contract; Satisfaction.