The relationship of work satisfaction and organizational commitment to retirement intention

The relationship between attitudes, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment has been shown to influence turnover/retirement. This relationship is important because of changing demographic patterns in the U.S. that are contributing to present and future foodservice labor shortages. The labor shortage has potential for retarding the long-term growth of the foodservice industry. However, recruitment and retention of older workers could be a factor in controlling the problem. Therefore, the major purpose of this research was to obtain information from current older foodservice employees to permit the determination of how various aspects of their jobs affect job satisfaction and organizational commitment and, thus, intention to remain on the job by delaying retirement. Non-management-level hospital and college/university foodservice workers aged 55 years and older (no. = 243) were surveyed. Hospital employees were selected from corporate rosters provided by a major contract foodservice company. College and university employees were selected from the roster of the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS). No statistically meaningful relationship (r greater than or equal to .30) between work satisfaction (measured by the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire) and organizational commitment (measured by the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire), as correlated with retirement intention, was found. Although not considered meaningful, a slight statistical relationship was found (r = .15, p less than .02) between intrinsic satisfaction and the desire to delay retirement (work intention).