Determinants of Job Satisfaction Amongst Workers in Manufacturing Plants: An Empirical Study

Workers play a predominant role in the sustainability of organizations. Today, the evolving thought of smart organization necessitated the manufacturing sector to be smart-centric. Smart-centric relates to modernized manufacturing plants to perform manufacturing processes in the most modernized manner. Operating such systems requires a skilled workforce, especially amongst small and medium enterprises. It has been noticed that India is placed second largest in employment, unfortunately, it is characterized by a declining trend in human resources. India is blessed with skilled manpower ( Z. Voca and Y. Havolli, “The impact of Human Resources Development on small and Medium Enterprises (smes) performance,” Journal of Economics and Management Sciences, vol. 2, no. 2, 2019). However, there is an increased turnover rate with reference to skilled manpower (Mustafa et al. in Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance 8:228–250, 2021). Decreased satisfaction can be one amongst several reasons for depicting such a trend. The present paper focuses on workers’ satisfaction specifically in the manufacturing sector of micro, small and medium enterprises in Southern India, Kerala. The paper’s main objective is to measure the model of workers’ satisfaction from the point of view of plant workers in Kerala. The paper throws light to managers and policymakers to develop strategies for sustaining the workers in manufacturing plants amongst small firms.