Employee welfare has become a strategically important component of human resource management in higher education because academic quality, service delivery, and institutional stability depend substantially on the attitudes and retention of both academic and administrative staff. In India, higher education has expanded considerably in scale, while policy discourse has increasingly emphasized institutional development, safety, staff wellbeing, and professional capacity building. Against this backdrop, the present study examines the impact of employee welfare measures on job satisfaction and organizational commitment among academic and administrative staff in higher educational institutions of the Indore region. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory, Organizational Support Theory, and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, the study conceptualizes employee welfare as a multidimensional construct comprising health and wellbeing support, leave and work-life support, financial and social security support, grievance redressal and workplace support, and professional development and career support (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Herzberg et al., 1959; Meyer & Allen, 1991; Spector, 1985).

Using an assumed cross-sectional explanatory design with stratified random sampling, the paper proposes and illustrates a survey-based model with 312 usable responses from academic and administrative employees across public and private institutions in Indore. The illustrative findings indicate that employee welfare measures are positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment, with professional development and career support emerging as the strongest predictor of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction also shows a strong positive association with organizational commitment and partially mediates the relationship between employee welfare and commitment. These findings suggest that welfare in higher education should be understood not merely as a set of fringe benefits, but as an integrated institutional system that combines security, fairness, wellbeing, participation, and opportunities for professional growth.

The paper contributes to academic-sector HRM by presenting a context-sensitive framework for Indian higher education and by offering a publication-ready survey instrument that avoids reproducing proprietary items verbatim. It concludes that institutions in the Indore region can strengthen staff morale and commitment by investing in welfare architectures that are transparent, developmental, and responsive to the differentiated needs of academic and administrative employees.....