Abstract:
The South African ICT industry is struggling with high turnover despite the relatively high remuneration
packages it offers to its gender and racially diverse IT professionals. This study explored pay satisfaction
levels and its relationship with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions.
Survey responses from 158 IT professionals were subjected to descriptive, correlation and regression
analysis. The results show that, irrespective of gender or race, employees generally have low pay
satisfaction, low organizational commitment, and only moderate job satisfaction levels. However, black
ethnic groups did show a difference in their appraisals of pay satisfaction, expressing slightly lower pay
satisfaction than white males. Organizational commitment and job satisfaction were the most important
predictors of turnover intentions, and they partially mediated the influence of pay satisfaction on
turnover intentions. Employers can reduce IT turnover due to low pay satisfaction by investing in
interventions that raise the levels of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and distributive and
procedural justice. Future IT research on the continent needs to include race and gender as distinct
analytical categories to better understand turnover intentions.
