Equitable Pay as an Antecedent of Work Performance and Job Satisfaction: Experience from University for Development Studies

This study was conducted based on the assumption that “a happy worker is a productive worker”. The research was conducted to establish whether equitable pay (salary satisfaction) can lead to work performance and job satisfaction among administrative staff of the University for Development Studies at its Central Administration in the Tamale Campus. Sixty (60) staff were selected using the simple random sampling method. The qualitative research approach was adopted. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. The questionnaire was formally classified as standard instrument for measuring employees' demographic characteristics, equity perceptions and job satisfaction. The surveys were collected and keyed into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 16) and Windows 7 Microsoft Excel Package. The survey has been answered by 57 total respondents, 37 male and 20 female. In the end the study found that equitable pay will make employees happy as such it will make them work harder, serve as motivation to unleash the potentials of staff for the development of the university, serve as a morale boaster, reduce injustice, suspicion, gossips, rumour mongering, attrition, promote trust and confidence at the workplace. It further revealed that when employees are happy there would do quality work, accomplish multiple tasks without complaints, create good rapport between the employee, supervisor and employer and eventually increase job performance. The study therefore recommends that single spine pay policy introduced into the public sector of Ghana should be strictly implemented to remove the apathy shown by staff who claim though they were employed the same period with similar qualifications and on similar ranks but experience huge salary differences.