1. Introduction
Employee motivation and satisfaction in insurance industries have received much scholarly attention, which is not unexpected given the current situation. One of the more accepted ideas to emerge is that insurance businesses will be better able to accomplish their objectives if their people are motivated and happy. However, employee motivation and satisfaction levels are frustrating in the Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC) of Bangladesh. The tendency to maintain compensation policy over a long period was genuinely hopeless and reflected the insurance industry’s low job motivation and satisfaction. As a result, the employees leave the organization. According to the annual report of the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority IDRA (2010–2011 to 2016–2017 and 2017–2018, Annual Report. Available online:
http://www.idra.org.bd/sites/default/files/files/idra.portal.gov.bd/annual_reports/961c9387_5cd3_4996_b8bc_97e3bf55fead/a7bb1216b730eb575c3a4220412c812e.pdf (accessed on 5 February 2022)), more employees were removed (removed staff was 3230 in 2017) every year than employees who were recruited (recruited staff was 2201 in 2017) for the life insurance industries in Bangladesh. To solve the problem, this study attempts to generate insight into how to increase employee job satisfaction based on an efficient compensation policy through mediating employee motivation. Employee satisfaction is a primary target of an organization’s compensation system (
Ducharme et al. 2005) because it influences employee motivation and outcomes such as job satisfaction. Consequently, compensation, motivation and employee job satisfaction are three valuable tools in management’s toolbox for contributing to organizational effectiveness.
Compensation has a beneficial connection to employees’ desires as well as expectations. The remuneration packages offered by the company significantly impact how long employees are willing to remain on the job (
Armstrong 2016;
Bilyk and Sheremet 2019;
Mitsel et al. 2021). Job satisfaction is said to be a consequence of several distinct satisfactions and dissatisfactions that arise from various aspects of the employee’s experience with their employment (
Bustamam et al. 2014). Job satisfaction is a significant issue for companies since it affects staff performance and productivity, absenteeism, and attrition (
Onukwube 2012;
Līduma and Lūsēna-Ezera 2021;
Malysheva and Hurova 2021). According to
Ibrahim and Boerhaneoddin (
2010), compensation motivates people to stay on the job, resulting in job satisfaction, commitment, and dedication. Additionally, it seems to be a fact that the compensation system provides money to employees and represents a significant expense for the company. In such a case, the Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC) needs to focus on its compensation system as a powerful weapon to influence and affect the motivation of employees to achieve work satisfaction. Organizations should improve internal and extrinsic motivation by paying people well to raise job satisfaction (
Stringer et al. 2011). Furthermore, the compensation structure is a less noticeable organizational aspect to outsiders; hence, it might reveal information about an organization’s culture, standards, and values to job candidates.
Moreover, compensation is crucial to the organization to attract, motivate, satisfy, and retain outstanding individuals. The workforce’s knowledge, talents, and skills are critical resources for modifying new or current processes to gain a strategic advantage (
Reza and Faisal-E-Alam 2022). Innovative compensation systems can motivate and satisfy employees, which is required in order for the Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC) to fill the talent shortages over the next decade in Bangladesh. Although the World Bank has provided support through the Bangladesh Insurance Sector Development Project (BISDP) to strengthen and modernize the business practices of the Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC), along with the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA), Bangladesh Insurance Association (BIA), and Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC), the initiatives are insufficient to recover the life insurance industry’s problem, as mentioned above. However, minimal empirical evidence exists in this regard. Therefore, measuring the mediation effect of employee motivation on compensation to the satisfaction relationship can bring organizational success and sustainability to JBC in Bangladesh. This is because change is necessary for enhancing productivity and performance, since every organization is in a state of development (
Shil et al. 2020), and so are its employees.
For this study, the conceptual framework (see
Figure 1) represents the compensation system (such as basic salary, house rent allowance, festival allowance, medical facility, conveyance allowance, recreation allowance, transport allowance, food allowance, and other allowances) as the independent variable, employee motivation as the mediator variable, and employee satisfaction as the dependent variable. Compensation systems predict employee satisfaction by mediating employee motivation according to the relevant reviews discussed earlier in the study’s introduction and the literature review section. This study’s theoretical underpinning is the expectancy theory, which focuses on the relationship between rewards (valence), motivational drive (instrumentality), and behavior (expectancy), with the reward being the compensation system and the behavior being employee satisfaction, which is based on the inner drive of employees (
Muguongo et al. 2015). Moreover, equity theory states that comparing an employee’s input–output to that of other employees will reveal whether they are satisfied or not, which influenced by motivation where the effort is considered as input and the pay is considered as output (
Sudiardhita et al. 2018).
The lack of prior research on the mediation effect of employee motivation in this study adds to the body of knowledge on compensation to satisfaction. Insurance industries and financial industries would be inspired to restructure their compensation policy to support their employees’ motivation and expectations if they were aware of the importance of the indicators. Our work contributes to the ongoing debate in support of human resource management as an effective instrument for reducing dissatisfaction with work via motivation. In this study, the empirical work reviews are shown in detail to develop study hypotheses in the literature review section. After that, methods are discussed, including population, sample size, measurement procedure, scale, and data analysis techniques. Then, the results section describes part by part to reach the study hypotheses. Next, the discussion section explains how the findings contribute to organization and theory. Finally, the conclusion section shows to what extent the study objectives were achieved, study limitations, and future guidelines for professionals, academicians, and researchers.
3. Materials and Methods
Employees of the Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC) who work inside the respective organizations served as the population for this study. A self-administered questionnaire survey was directed to 103 JBC employees in different departments. The sample size (n) was 103, which was calculated using the formula of finite population where the population (N) was 1104, population portion (p) was 92%, the confidence level was 95% (z-score was ±1.96), and margin of error (e) was 5%. The random sampling technique was utilized to acquire data, and 100 employees were given back the questionnaire after completion. Since starting their positions, all respondents received one official performance review and one salary rise, and they were all entitled to bonuses and other incentives. The data collection period was held from 1st August to 30th September in 2021. There were two sections to the questionnaire. The questionnaire’s first part contained basic information on the respondents, while the second part contained the measuring factors on a five-point Likert scale from 5 (strongly satisfied) to 1 (strongly dissatisfied). The compensation system was measured by nine items, whereas employee motivation and employee satisfaction were measured by only one item each. The questionnaire was supplied to the employees of the JBC in different regions of the country, such as Dhaka, Rajshahi, Khulna, Chittagong, Rangpur, Sylhet, and Mymensingh. The descriptive statistics, alpha value, correlation test, direct effect, indirect effect and total effect analysis were used to examine and interpret after collecting data. The processed results in the tabular form through running SPSS Vs 26 were interpreted clearly to specify the findings. In addition, we also employed the process macro from
Hayes (
2018) to test four hypotheses. Likewise, 5000 bootstrap samples were used to find the indirect impact, producing results with greater statistical power than the
Sobel (
1982) test (
Edeh et al. 2022;
Kreiseder and Mosenhauer 2022;
Ha and Lee 2022;
Zhao et al. 2010). Due to the quantitative research design, the SPSS software was chosen because of its competence, variety, and flexibility in analyzing the vast amounts of data obtained (
Adefulu and Adebowale 2019).
5. Discussion
This study examined the effect of JBC’s compensation system on satisfaction with the mediating effect of employee motivation, and the findings indicate a strong link between the compensation system and staff satisfaction through the partial mediation impact of employee motivation. The study findings were supported by the study of
Uppal (
2005), who discovered that employee compensation (fringe benefits) was positively connected to employee job satisfaction. However, in the link between compensation and employee satisfaction, employee performance was discussed rather than the role of motivation as mediator (
Candradewi and Dewi 2019). Furthermore,
Odunlade (
2012) identified a connection between compensation and job satisfaction. However, the compensation and motivation found a positive relationship with job satisfaction separately, whereas the authors did not measure the mediation effect of motivation in the relationship between compensation and satisfaction, which is demonstrated in our study findings (
Pudjiastuti and Sijabat 2022). According to
Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza (
2000), compensation influences how happy employees are at their jobs. However, there is still disagreement over how compensation could affect employee job satisfaction (
Tian et al. 2020).
On the other hand, the working environment directly impacts employee satisfaction, whereas compensation does not (
Rojikinnor et al. 2022;
Dietz et al. 2022).
Setyorini et al. (
2018) also confirmed a comparable finding, showing that compensation had a favorable and substantial influence on employee work satisfaction where motivation did not focus as a direct or indirect factor. Furthermore, another study found all the direct relationships between compensation and satisfaction, compensation and motivation, motivation and satisfaction; conversely, it was not considered the mediation effect of employee motivation in the connection between compensation and satisfaction as in this study (
Sudiardhita et al. 2018). Additionally, it was discovered that remuneration had a favorable and considerable impact on work satisfaction, whereas benefits had no such impact (
Mabaso and Dlamini 2017;
Kowalski et al. 2022). Overall, this study mostly agrees with other findings where all the factors such as salaries, incentives, benefits packages, leave-related benefits, health benefits, retirement benefits, dismissal benefits, and staff welfare programs had a substantial impact on employees’ satisfaction (
Nane 2019;
Dinter et al. 2022), except for motivation as a mediation impact. Despite having the prior evidence, modern organizations today view compensation with motivation as the pivotal element to achieve better returns in the form of improved employee satisfaction, competitiveness, or other financial measures.
6. Conclusions
Human resources are increasingly viewed as a corporation’s most significant resource for achieving competitive advantage in the business sector. Recruiting and retaining the proper employees is one of the most challenging tasks for any company. The findings of this study looked into and identified the partial indirect effect of motivation on the relationship between overall compensation and employee satisfaction. The findings also implied that JBC’s remuneration structure directly impacts employee pleasure via partial mediating of motivation. Employees will feel valued and have high motivation and job satisfaction. This could boost employees’ morale and cause employees to be inspired and happy. Otherwise, everyone will admit that a group of dissatisfied employees will not be able to work appropriately for the company due to insufficient compensation and reluctance. It was discovered that compensation, motivation, and employee satisfaction enabled JBC to use its human resources more productively and efficiently. In addition, policy should be revised to upgrade the compensation system so that employees are more encouraged and committed to the organization. The high satisfaction of employees helps the firm meet its aim and target on time. Furthermore, compensation system practice and employees’ inner desires vary considerably by age, gender, educational capacity, and employees’ experiences, which needs to be considered.
Additionally, this study outcome will help all of the Bangladesh insurance and financial industries to understand the significant factors or elements of compensation along with motivation, which leads to employee satisfaction. Furthermore, this investigation gives some benefits such as commitment, loyalty, and less turnover of employees for a long time. The insurance industries might also realize or understand the relevance of employee satisfaction and motivation in terms of the payment scheme they offer. Employees will provide their best effort to optimize the organization’s long-term performance and reputation if they are stirred and content with their salary. The primary drawbacks are both direct and indirect compensation categories considered. However, in future studies, it would be wise to take these two categories as individual variables to measure employee turnover intention, employee performance, and commitment. Likewise, future research should also be comparative, adding more human resource functions. Perhaps the impact of motivation and satisfaction as a mediation or moderation construct on different industrial factors in an explanatory research framework can be investigated in any other financial and non-financial organizations.