The Role of Job Satisfaction in Mediating the Effect of Workload, Compensation, anda Leadhership on Performance

Abstract

Employee performance is central to banking organizations, yet findings on the roles of workload, compensation, leadership, and job satisfaction remain inconsistent, and several 2025 business targets at PT Bank NTT, Kefamenanu Branch, were not fully achieved. This study aims to analyze the direct and indirect relationships of workload, compensation, and leadership with employee performance through job satisfaction as a mediating variable. A quantitative explanatory design was applied to a census of 105 employees, with questionnaire data analyzed using Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), including measurement and structural model evaluation and bootstrapping. Workload, compensation, and leadership had positive and significant effects on job satisfaction (β = 0.296, 0.353, and 0.325, respectively), and job satisfaction positively affected performance (β = 0.534). The direct effects of the three variables on performance were not significant, whereas all three indirect effects were significant, indicating indirect-only mediation. The model explained 58.1% of the variance in job satisfaction and 49.0% in performance. Job satisfaction thus functions as the mechanism linking working conditions to performance, so performance improvement should prioritize compensation adequacy, leadership quality, and workload distribution.