Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction on the Relationship between the Training and the Academic Staff Performance of Selected Federal Polytechnics in North West, Nigeria

This study is aimed at examining the mediating role of job satisfaction on the relationship between the training and performance of academic staff of some selected federal polytechnics in north-west Nigeria. The research design adopted for this study was descriptive survey and the population was one thousand seven hundred and four (1704) while the sample size was four hundred and seventy drawn from the population. Convenience sampling technique was used in selecting the academic staff using Krejcie and Morgans’ (1970) table of determining sample size. Partial least square (PLS) software was used to analyze the response of the 372 returned copies of the questionnaire through Pearson correlation and multiple regressions. The result revealed that the independent variables (selection procedure, training design and training methods) have an established relationship with the performance as well as job satisfaction. The regression result showed that selection procedure and training method have significant effects on the dependent variable (performance). Training design is found to have an insignificant effect on the performance. Furthermore, on the mediating variable (job satisfaction) with performance, selection procedure and training design were found to have insignificant effect on the mediator (job satisfaction) with performance. Further, findings revealed that effective training leads to job satisfaction and improve academic staff performance in the selected federal polytechnics. The study recommended that management should use the appropriate training policies in selecting employee for training in order to avoid bias as this improves academic staff performance in federal polytechnics. Moreover, providing good training design that is rich in content and good training method should also be emphasized to improve job satisfaction which leads to improved performance of the employees in the polytechnics.