Impact of job satisfaction on employee turnover intention in accounting firms in the Philippines: Face-to-face vs work-from-home arrangement

The COVID19 pandemic has disrupted a lot of areas in business and the economy. Previously established theories and assumptions about how organizations work may no longer hold true given the drastic shake-up in the workplace environment. Our ideas on what satisfies an employee at work and what makes them stay with the organization are most likely different now as to what they were in the pre-pandemic period. With the main research objective of determining which work setup between face-to-face and work-from home is better in terms of employee job satisfaction and turnover intentions, this research used quantitative techniques to analyze the impact of job satisfaction on employee turnover intentions in the work-from-home setting and figured out whether there was any significant difference in the level of job satisfaction derived under the face-to-face work setup and the work-from-home setup. Data used for the study were gathered from employees working in the top three accounting firms in the Philippines and have experienced working under both the face-to-face and work-from-home setups using a survey questionnaire. Analysis of the data was done using mediated regression and one sample paired t-test. Findings of the study revealed that job satisfaction under work-from-home setup still has a significant negative impact on employee turnover intentions even though there is a significant difference in the level of job satisfaction under face-to-face work setup and work-from-home setup. Based on these findings, recommendations were made on how the firms can address the factors identified to have an effect on employees’ level of job satisfaction. In addition, recommendations on company policies were given depending on which work setup the company wishes to implement for the post-pandemic era.