Employees' job satisfaction, job performance and their relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam

Purpose. Purpose is to describe the current situation and different impacts of demographic variables such as gender, age and marital status on employees' job satisfaction, job performance and their relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. Clarify the levels of influence among different job satisfaction groups on job performance and vice versa, the levels of influence among different job performance groups on job satisfaction. Study design. Data were collected using a survey for a convenient sample of 485 employees working at clothing and footwear factories in industrial zones of Hanoi and Hochiminh city Vietnam. Findings. Employees have lower job satisfaction and average job performance. The findings have no statistical difference from those before COVID-19. The cluster analysis results show that there are two employee groups, divided by the level of job satisfaction as well as job performance. There is no statistical significance difference by gender in employees' job satisfaction and job performance. Married people are more satisfied and have better performance than unmarried people whereas the young have lower job satisfaction and job performance than the older (p < 0.01). The job satisfaction group also indicate higher work performance than the one with lower job satisfaction. Correspondingly, the good performed group have greater job satisfaction than the one with average job performance (p < 0.01). The results reveal surprises about the role of relationships and salary. Relationships (colleagues, supervisors) have a strong impact on job performance of the job satisfaction group and on the job satisfaction of the good job performance. Meanwhile, salary has a strong impact on the performance of the less satisfaction group and on the job satisfaction of the average performance group. Implications for practice. Offer some recommendations for increasing employees' job satisfaction and job performance, facilitate sustainable development to the organization. Value of the results. The study compares the difference in the influence level of job satisfaction on job performance when clustering employees into groups of high and low job satisfaction. Likewise, the study also analyzes the impact of performance groups on employees' job satisfaction.