Job Performance and the Mediating Effects of Job Engagement and Job Satisfaction: The Case of SMEs in Vietnam in the Post Covid-19 Era

Understanding job performance and its influencing factors is of great essence in any companies as it can help business owners to realize existing problems and find suitable solutions. The study is conducted with the purpose of analyzing the current job performance at SMEs in Vietnam and its potential determinants. Based on the original ideas of Fachrunnisa et al. (2014) and Koopmans et al. (2014), a structural equational model of estimation was developed exclusively to fit the context of Vietnamese SMEs. Using the survey data of 2154 staffs working in local SMEs, the study found evidence to conclude the mediating effects of job engagement and job satisfaction on the overall performance of staffs in Vietnamese SMEs. Taking industry as a control variable, the results strongly confirm an exploratory empirical findings on the indirect impact of payment, opportunities for promotion, nature of job, colleagues, and supervisors on job performance of employees in Vietnamese SMEs. Even though job engagement presented a weak-mediating effect, the job satisfaction shows a consistent and solid mediating effect in this case.