Perspective on the Influence of Leadership on Job Satisfaction and Lower Employee Turnover in the Mineral Industry

A lower employee turnover rate depends on job satisfaction, working conditions, organizational commitment, and leadership factors. Unfortunately, the employee turnover rate is still higher in the mineral industry than in other industries in China. Although there are many research papers on employee turnover, there is little research investigating leadership factors and their influence on employee turnover. This research paper aims to explore the influence of leadership on job satisfaction and its effect on employee turnover in the mining industry. This paper evaluates those factors through the structural equation model (SEM), including a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a path analysis of the model to test the hypotheses. The results of a survey with 368 respondents indicated that the influence of good leadership had positive effects on both job satisfaction and employee turnover, while fair working conditions had positive mediation effects on both leadership and job satisfaction. Organizational commitment had strong effects on employee turnover (estimate values beta= 0.572,p< 0.001). However, organizational commitment was not a qualified mediator with both leadership and employee turnover (beta= 0.312,p< 0.001). Consequently, the working conditions variable in the work environment was an important independent variable and also one of the key factors for job satisfaction. The higher estimate value (beta= 0.541,p< 0.001) of leadership to employee turnover means that it indicated good leadership was a key factor in lowering employee turnover. The results of this study will offer the mining industry a future reference for sustainability and for the field of academic research in the future.