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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

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 Talent Retention

1.0 Introduction

The central spine of any organization is none other than the workforce itself. Employees
are the most valuable assets of an organization as their significance to organizations
calls for not only the need to attract the best talents but also the necessity to retain them
for a long term. Success in today's competitive world depends less on the
benefits related to technology and economies of scale but is acquired more from human
resources and the increasing involvement of human resource management practices.
Many organizations now acknowledge that employee retention as well as employee
commitment represent a source of strategic and competitive advantage.

Human resource management (HRM) refers to the practices and policies that affects
employees’ attitudes, behavior and performance. Human resource management
practices includes screening, recruiting, training, rewarding and also appraising
(Kossivi, B. et al., 2016). According to Danish and Usman (2010), employees are
considered as one of the most vital assets of a company as they contribute to
its success and growth. HRM professionals embrace the idea that employees are
essential to the success of the organizations, and as such, they view employees
as assets. Therefore, the key element to the survival and success of a company is
the availability of the right employees in the right place and at the right time.

Loyalty is another elements in successful talent retention. Organizational loyalty is

defined as promoting the organization to outsiders, remaining loyal to the company
even under adverse conditions as well as defending and protecting the
organization against outside threats (Maloney (2013). He further claimed that a
high employee turnover is a sign of employee disloyalty. Therefore
understanding ways to foster employee loyalty can lead to a reduction in the
number of turnover within a company and boost the sustainability of the firm
during difficult times (Aityan and Gupta, 2012). The organizational loyalty of
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employees not only adds value to a company but it is also involving a cost-
effective philosophy. When employees are loyal, they will work with commitment and be
diligent towards their job. This will lead to an increase in their productivity in the
workplace. Moreover, loyal employees are less likely to leave their companies,
thereby reducing the cost associated with the recruitment and selection of new
employees (Salleh et al., 2017). There is an extensive number of studies focusing on
customer retention (Alshurideh et al. 2017; Kurdi et al., 2020) and to what level retention
is beneficial for the organization (Alshurideh, 2016). This understanding supports the
idea that employees are considered a basic and essential organizational asset.

This paper aims to elaborate the following broad factors: development opportunities,
compensation, work-life balance, management and leadership, work environment,
social support, organizational commitment and issues pertaining to talent retention.

2.0 Definition

Frederick Winslow Taylor made an outstanding contribution to the field of management

through the scientific management principles (Rahman, 2012). The underpinning
philosophy of Frederick Taylor on human resource processes are inclusive of four
main practices namely recruitment and selection, training and development,
performance appraisal, compensation and rewards. Frederick Taylor believed that
human resource management comprised of the recruitment and selection of the right
personnel for the right positions, providing appropriate training and development,
developing an accurate performance appraisal system and instituting a fair
compensation system. These four criteria mentioned above are essential
elements in developing a successful HRM system.

Taylor identified three causes of antagonism and inefficiency namely: Fallacious belief
of workers that increased output would lead to unemployment inevitably, defective
system of management which makes workers to restrict output to protect their interest
and rule of thumb which is inefficient and efforts wasting. Taylor (1947) proposed four
principles to achieve greater prosperity of both the employer and employees.

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i. Science, not a rule of thumb: Taylor advocated that employers ought to
examine each element of a job scientifically. Scientific investigation should be employed
to back up management decisions. This principle ensures that minimum human effort is
exerted while maximum output is produced.

ii. Harmony or cooperation between employer and workers: The employer and
workers’ relationship should be maintained, and works should be carried in accordance
to standards. The cooperation between employers and workers eliminates conflict and
ensures harmony.

iii. Scientific selection, and training and development of workers: Appropriate

required skills and qualities should be possessed by employees in order to complete
job. Therefore, capable workers should be hired, and incapable workers should be
taken out of work through systematic way to ensure that workers who are capable and
suited for the job will thrive and become more prosperous.

iv. Division and segregation of work: The responsibility of employers and workers are
divided and communicated accordingly. Tasks are also broken down into smaller
components to find an optimal method of performing a task. Division of work provides
clarity for employers on how the job should be done and exercising in responsibility to
do a job.

Recruitment of talent is the initial process of engaging individual to join the workforce of
an organization whereby talent retention is to ensure the existing workforce stay in the
employment. Job retention helps in human resource planning in an organization based
on estimation on the gap between the demand and supply of workforce required for
existing as well as the future needs of an organization based on the human resource
objectives of the organization. The primary concept of employee retention is to prevent
talented employees from leaving the organization (James & Mathew, 2012).
Furthermore, the process facilitates in succession planning whereas it aims to
determine the competent strategic positions in an organization. It helps to have a
talented and committed workforce that would reduce recruitment costs and training and
development costs.

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Securing and retaining skilled employees plays an imperative role in any organization,
for the reason that employees’ knowledge and skills are essential to companies’ ability
to be economically competitive (Kumar, A. A., & Mathimaran, 2017). Successful
employee retention contributes is essential to an organization’s strength, growth and
revenue (Cloutier, O., 2015).

3.0 Content of Topics

3.1 Recruitment and Selection

Initial process in human resource practice is the recruitment or known as selection of

potential employees. Recruitment is one of the crucial functions of HRM as it helps
managers to attract and select the best candidates which results in an improvement of a
company’s performance. The purpose of recruitment is to seek out or explore, to
evaluate, to induce and to obtain commitment from the prospective employees so as to
fill up positions required for successful operation and organization. Raghavi and
Gopinathan, (2013) define it as the process of creating a group of qualified candidates
for vacancies within organizations. In both professional and non-professional fields,
employment will include an attempt to identify a diverse group of applicants with the
necessary qualifications and capabilities, and inform them of available job opportunities.

There are various methods of recruitment but for the sake of simplicity, they have been
categorized under two main categories:

3.1.1 Internal Recruitment

The internal recruitment refers to sourcing candidates from within the organization or
amongst those who are already in the organization workforce. Notice board and internal
bulletin serve as the medium of announcement to deserving candidates for interview as
well as upgrade their position level and climbing for their career growth. However, this
process may not be followed in all organizations, for example in the study (Sintheya
Rahman, 2011).

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Freeman and Gilbert (2000) identified three advantages of an internal recruitment for
organization. Firstly, the competency and skills thus familiarity of accomplishing job
accordingly without further training. Secondly, a promotion from within policy fosters
loyalty and inspires greater effort among organization members. Finally, it is usually less
expensive to recruit or promote from within than to hire from outside the organization
especially on the job training.

Certain disadvantages to internal recruitment were on the limitation of the pool of

available talent. In addition, it reduces the chance that fresh viewpoints will enter the
organization, and it may encourage complacency among employees who assume
seniority ensures promotion.

3.1.2 External Recruitment

Scouting for refresh employees from outside the organization is another method of
recruitment. As some of the external candidates are experienced as well as fresh
candidates, it would further add value to the organization in terms of new ideas of
thinking (Bushra, Bintey and Mahbub, 2020). In the case of new technical competencies
which not available internally, external recruitment would be best alternative to sought
for (Ayesha Yaseen, 2015).

The rise in technological advancement resulted in changes in recruitment using digital

platform. Therefore, it is no surprise that the internet has led to changes in recruitment
practices in scouting for talents. The trend of using online recruitment is typical for
medium and small firms as well as for big organizations as it helps in creating a
wide pool of qualified applicants swiftly. According to a research conducted recently,
the recruitment sources that employers use include web sites (87%), internet job sites
(82%) and job fairs (55%) (Bogatova, 2017).

3.2 Communication

Providing best working infrastructure and work procedures as gesture to retain talent
are insufficient without clear and comprehensive communication. Efficient
communication process helps the organization to retain its employees (Cloutier et al.,
2015). Effective communication suggests that in order to maintain a healthy work

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culture, leadership should be able to operate in an interpersonal, group, organizational
and intercultural communication effectively. According to Sinha & Sinha (2012),
effective communication not only improves the identity the employee associated with
the company but also creates an environment of openness and trust. James & Mathew
(2012) in their studies found out that effective communication plays a greater role to
generate an amicable environment at the workplace. Better communication from
company executives helps better employee engagement and initiate trust.

3.3 Compensation and Rewards

Compensation in organizations can be defined as benefits gained in the form of

monetary or non-monetary. Monetary gains can be in the form of salary, wage and
allowance whilst non-monetary can be under the benefit in kind such as hospitalization,
dental and other benefits such as injury that the employee receives from the employer.
It is true that the trend is changing but still research shows that compensation plays a
greater role in the retention of employees. On the other hand, reward represents
anything that the workforce may value and that the management is willing to offer in
return for their contributions (Chiang and Birtch, 2008). Rewards does not mean pay
and employee benefits only. It also includes non-financial rewards such as
recognition and increased job responsibility.

Reward management is aimed at not only attracting employees but also to retain them
in the organization. Korir and Kipkebut (2016) revealed that the reward management
strategy of a company should be designed in a way that it attracts, entice and retains
the right employees by ensuring that there is a direct relationship between rewards and
efforts. A study conducted by Hong, Hao, Kumar, Ramendran, & Kadiresan (2012)
shows that a company with no compensation planning results in a poor working
environment. Kumar & Arora (2012) states that 27 percent of employees, compensation
was the primary reason for leaving the company. Tran H. (2016) found that a rise in pay
had a substantial impact on workforce turnover rate and that the impact is even
more significant on high performers. High-performing employees who are
offered substantial pay increases will have a lower tendency to quit their firm.

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Subsequently, it will reduce the turnover rate of an organizations for the reason of
adequate reward.

In addition, Manurung (2017) also claimed a proper compensation and reward system
will make the employee loyal to the company thus significantly increase their
contribution and productivity. In crux, the fairer and just an employee is compensated
and rewarded, the higher will be his/her organizational loyalty to the company.

3.4 Leadership Influence

The way people are managed and the leadership style have direct influence on an
organization ability to maintain its workforce. Eisenberger, Fasolo, Davis-LaMastro
(1990) argued that the way employees. Clear instructional direction and how well the
management treats the employees and the style of leadership would have significant
impact on the perspective of environmental and cultural aspect of an organization. The
management plays a determinant role in employee retention and established that there
is a direct correlation between employee retention and manager behavior. The impact of
management on employee retention can be viewed from two perspectives: leadership
style and management support (Christeen, G., 2015).

Involvement of employee in decision making motivates them to stay in an organization

especially participation in decision-making process makes employees feel happy and
part of the organization and indirectly, increases loyalty and retention. As far as support
is concerned, Paillé (2013) observed that management support is even more important
than the organizational one. The role of leadership is very critical in employee retention
in three ways. Firstly, the stakeholder culture where ethical and social behaviour is of
paramount importance. Secondly, a fair and inclusive HR practices and lastly, Full
managerial support for employee development (Doh, Stumpf, & Tymon, 2011). Cloutier
et al. (2015), revealed that a positive working condition leads to a good relationship
increases the sense of belonging to the organization.

3.5 Career Development

Advancement in career is one of the desired and ambition of any workers. Meaning a
gradual and progressive upwards movement in career within the organization.

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According to Sullivan and Baruch (2009) defined “career” as “an individual’s work-
related and other relevant experiences, both inside and outside of organizations that
form a unique pattern over the individual’s life span”. One definition of career
management is that it is the planning of one’s activities and engagements in the job one
assumes in the path of his life for better completion, growth and financial stability. In
addition, according to Career Development Association of Alberta (2012) defined career
development as “the lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure, and
transitions in order to move toward a personally determined and evolving preferred
future”. The positive progress in career works as opportunity as why 39 percent of
employees are engaged.” (Dixon, 2017).

3.6 Working Environment and Support

A conducive working condition not only refers to an appropriate physical but inclusive of
the environment itself. A conducive work environment appears to be an essential factor
in employee retention. Spence, Leiter, Day, and Gilin (2009) gathered evidence
supporting the fact that favorable working environment contributes to employee
retention. A conducive working environment can be defined as a flexible atmosphere
where working experience is enjoyable, resources and facilities. Wood (2013) reached
the conclusion that availability of resource can be a determinant factor in retention and
flexibility plays an important role, particularly in the retention of healthy workers (Loan-
Clarke et al., 2010).

3.7 Work-Life Balance

Work life balance is a concept of striking a balance between working responsibilities

and non-working activities thus refers to the ability to create a personal environment that
does not become overwhelmed by work-related stress or conflict between both that
empower employees to feel in control of such activities. The work life balance stands on
three main key which are inter-connected components. Firstly, “time balance” which
refers to equal time being given to both work and non-work roles. Secondly,
“involvement balance” which refers to equal levels of psychological involvement in
both work-life balance and thirdly efforts to make time for family, friends, community
participation, spirituality, personal growth, self-care, and other personal activities

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altogether in a time. Ferguson, Carlson, Zivnuska, and Whitten (2010) explained work
life balance as an execution of role-related anticipations that are collaborated and
collectively unanimously agreed between an individual and his role-partners in the work
and family spheres.

Work-life balance is becoming gradually more central for employees and tends to affect
employees’ decision to stay in organization. Nowadays employees long for flexible work
schedules which allow them to take care of both their personal and professional life.
Osman (2013) found that offering emotional support to employees through work-life
balance reduces their intention to quit their job and Mita, Aarti & Ravneeta (2014)
observed a direct relation between employees’ decision to stay and work-life balance.

Another aspect of working condition engage the concept of social support. Social
support basically relates to the degree of satisfactory relationship with colleagues or
fellow employees. Relationship with co-workers appears to be determinant factor of
retention.

4.0 Problems or issues relating to the topic in term of Malaysia and global
contexts

The effort of employee’s retention is a daunting task to accomplish. According to Terera

& Ngirande (2014), there are three types of challenges that companies face in the
retention of employees due to stiff competition from business rivals, brain drain such as
migration of skill labour form one business entity to another which offers better lucrative
opportunities rewards and the inability of companies to predict the future requirements
of employees as corrective action. Shortage of talent due to increased global talent
(Scott, McMullen, & Royal, 2012) is also yet another challenge in talent retention.

4.1 Turnover Intention

The problems of turnover intention amongst employees is a crucial matters to be

attended too. Turnover intention can be referred to the likeliness of an employee to
leave his or her current job position (Ngamkroeckjoti, Ounprechavanit & Kijboonchoo,
2012) or can be illustrated as a scenario or situation where an employee leaves the

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organization due to several reasons. According to Hassan (2014), turnover is a crucial
issue for human resource department in every sector of the economy as it could affect
the productivity as well as the service quality of any organization. In simplicity, high
turnover would reflects the poor performance of organization as turnover intention
among employees as an important concern due to its depressing impact (Mamun &
Hasan, 2017).

There is new culture among this young generation in Malaysia which job hopping is a
common practice. Job hopping practices is driven by instinctive impulse rather than
logical thought and the Y generation group of employee has lowest loyalty towards the
organization. They will hop on job everywhere and at any time that will fulfill their
ambition and needs.

In the present study, a total of three potential factors will be used to examine its
relationship with the turnover intention. The potential factors that could affect the
turnover intention are work engagement (Lin & Liu, 2017), job demands (Bester, 2012)
and organizational commitment (Jehanzeb, Rasheed & Rasheed, 2013). Therefore, the
present research focused on the effects of work engagement, job demands, and
organizational commitment on turnover intention among employees from Penang
manufacturing industry.

The difficulty in retaining talent can be assessed through the following elements namely
turnover intention, work engagement, jobs demand, organizational commitments, jobs
security and work related stress.

4.1 Turnover intention

According to Chang, Black and William (2013), they explained that turnover intention is
the willingness of an employee to leave his or her current organization. Turnover
intention could occur when there are lack of motivation, promotion and performance in
the workplace, which results in the employee to quit the job and leave the organization
(Bhayo, Shah & Chachar, 2017). Moreover, turnover can be separated into two
categories, voluntary and involuntary turnover (Alias, Rohmanan, Ismail, Koe &
Othman, 2018).

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4.1.1 Voluntary

According to Bebe (2016), voluntary turnover is the situation that an employee quits the
organization intentionally. For example, an individual quitting the current job for a
lucrative pay at other organization. The average global voluntary employee turnover
rate is 9.1% (Mercer Webcast Series, 2016). Countries with highest voluntary employee
turnover rate is Argentina (16.8%), Venezuela (16.7%), Romania (16.5%), Indonesia
(15.8%) and Philippines (15.5%). In the case of Malaysia the voluntary turnover rate is
progressively increasing throughout the years from 9.3% in 2008, 10.1% in 2009 to 13%
in 2010. This indicates that Malaysia has employee turnover trend higher than average
global rate.

A depth analysis showed that the highest group that contributes to voluntary turnover is
Y generation. Generation Y is known with their characteristic that is highly ambitious,
always looking forward for a new job opportunity which gave more return on salary and
benefits in kind. Surprisingly, Malaysian employee are only willing to stay in an
organization for a maximum of 3 years period, this finding show that Malaysian were an
active job hopper.

4.1.2 Involuntary

Involuntary turnover is the situation that an employee quit the company unwillingly and
was forced to resign from his or her position due to several factors such as poor
performance, inability of organization to oblige a full salary. The classical example,
during the Covid-19 pandemic, most of the small medium enterprise unable to full salary
pay in retention of employees due to business disruption.

Involuntary turnover generally happens when either there is restructuring in the

company, or the performance of the employee is not up to the expectations. Employee
also leaves organization due to job dissatisfaction, job security, compensation not as
per expectation, lack of job autonomy, poor relationship with team members, poor
working conditions, lack of opportunity for career development etc. (James & Mathew,
2012).

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According to Bares (2017), the turnover rate of manufacturing industry around the world
in 2016 was 16%, and this is the fifth highest among all industries. Munir and Tobi
(2020) also stated that the turnover intention of employees has become a serious issue
in developing countries including Malaysia. They further added that manufacturing
industry shows a higher turnover intention compared to other sectors due to its working
environment. Moreover, prior studies have stated that Malaysia manufacturing industry
has suffered a high turnover rate (Chin, 2018). This statement is further supported by
Othman, Alias, Ariadi, Abdullah, Koe, Ismail and Ridzuan (2017) who stated that
Malaysia manufacturing industry is struggling to reduce the turnover rate among
employee. However, in the case of turnover intention of involuntary in 2020, indicated
the most suffered industry is the tourism industry as all tourism activities are totally shut
down.

Malaysia's unemployment rate rose to 4.9% in January 2021 compared with 4.8% in
December 2020 as the number of unemployed persons rose to 782,500 from 772,900
respectively. In 2019, the unemployment rate of Malaysia is 3.3% which means there
are 508,200 individuals unemployed (The Edge, March 8 2021). The rationale behind
the increase rate of unemployment for 2020 and above are partially cause by the rising
number of Covid-19 cases and the implementation of a second Movement Control
Order (MCO 2.0), review of business strategies in tourism-related industries, which
consist of accommodation and food services, passenger transportation, entertainment
and recreational activities.

4.2 Work engagement

The engaged workers need to be psychologically strong to live a high quality life in
terms of well-being to attain personal and organizational goals. The engagement is a
multidimensional construct as it denotes an expression of an individual’s complete self
namely physical, emotional and cognitive within their job roles. According to Kahn
(1990), it consists of three major facets that are; Vigor which refers to the work related
energy and resilience that an individual possesses; Dedication refers to high
involvement in their task, and have considerate quest of work; and Absorption: which

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refers to the degree to which the employees are entirely alert and immersed in their
task, which they find captivating and appealing.

According to Schaufeli, Bakker and Salanova (2006), work engagement is a positive

working state that consists of vigor, dedication and absorption. Vigor can be defined as
the high level of energy in work; dedication is referred as the high involvement of an
individual in work; and absorption can be comprehended as the state of an individual
being fully focused on work (Ahmad, Saffardin & Teoh, 2020). The presence of these
three factors could create engaged employees who possess high levels of energy and
are fully immersed in their work. Shropshire and Kadlec (2013) defined work
engagement as the positive relationship between one’s energy and his or her
psychological attachment towards the performance of the related job. Kunte and
Rungruang (2019) further explained that work engagement is very important for
organizations as employers need to identify the meaning of aspects of work so that they
could create a more energized and engaged working environment for their employees.

4.3 Job demands

Job demands consist of the psychological, social and organizational aspects of the job
that need an individual’s physical and psychological efforts. Although majority of the job
stress models indicated that job demands may bring adverse implication, other research
studies have found out that certain job demands could bring positive results such as
motivation. Challenge demands are referred to the job demands that could benefit the
employees while hindrance demands are referred to the job demands that could harm
the employees (Teoh & Kee, 2020). However, the general job demands, such as role
conflict, role overload and job ambiguity were focused in the study to determine its
impact on the turnover intention.

4.4 Organizational commitment

The role of managers and the organization’s human resources department in the 21st
century have grown increasingly complex when it comes to motivating and retaining
people (Idris, 2014). The globalization of the workforce through advances in computer
technology and telecommunication has created more challenges for managers as their

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role in attracting talents and ensuring an environment where those employees can
contribute as long-term assets to the organization (Singh & Gupta, 2015) is becoming
increasingly difficult.

The support from management or organizational is another critical factor in talent

retention. There are three categories that are affective commitment, continuance
commitment and normative commitment. Affective commitment refers to \employee’s
decision to stay in the organization due to their own willingness; continuance
commitment is defined as the employee’s decision to stay in the organization due to
financial support from the organization; and normative commitment refers to the
employee’s decision to remain in the organization as he or she feels obligated to do so
because of the support provided by the organization.

4.5 Job Security

Job security is ranked fourth important factor for employee retention based on
employees’ view. Katou & Budhwar (2007) stated that job security is very important
factor to be consider among employee in a country with high unemployment rate. Job
security also plays an important factor pandemic or during economy financial crisis as
employee need a stable employment to keep on living. A study conducted by Alif et al
(2017) to investigate relationship between career development and job security with
employee loyalty at luxury resorts in Terengganu found that there is a positive
correlation between career development and job security with employee loyalty.
Providing job security is essential for talent retention in employee satisfaction.

4.6 Work Related Stress

Work related stress is common and naturally present in the organization. Stress that
arises from the work will cause either positive or negative impact on employee. A
certain level of stress can be helpful as stress can acts as a motivator to accomplish
goals. Some of bad impact that could happen from the stress is absenteeism, work
dissatisfaction, in-effectiveness and turnover. These implications are more likely happen

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for short term and the implication will back to normal once the cause of stress is
eliminated. Long standing stress that is not properly managed will affect individual
health such as hypertension,
heart attack, stroke, depression, anxiety and obesity (Mahadi, N. et al., 2020). This
would definately affect organization in term of covering for medical cost and operating
cost. The matter of fact, covering for employee medical expenses is highly expensive
especially chronic disease as they are required for frequent follow up and continuation
of medication. In term of operating cost, organization need to find replacement if the
employee is on medical leave. They are multiple cause of work related stress (Mahadi,
N. et al., 2020). attributed to. List of common causes of work related to poor working
condition, personal characteristic, compensation, workplace relationship and
organizational culture.

5. Suggestion to handle the problems/ issues (with significant examples)

5.1 Turnover intention

Various aspect needed to be look upon by the management to retain talent such as the
welfare in terms of flexible working condition, conducive and equipped facilities’ and
infrastructure and the support from management.

5.2 Work engagement

In order to solve the issues of work engagement and challenges in the market
organization ought to come up with different strategies to retain employees, otherwise
organizations will be prone to many issues. Retention strategies referred to an
improvement on work policies design, role conflicts, least motivation, the concentration
of same work, lack of growth opportunities, lack of training and development, issues
with management or any possible challenges.

Work design policy should be more flexible in nature to ease some freedom to the
employees such as implementation on flexible time coming for work. In minimizing role

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of conflict, the management should observed any possible role conflict occurs within the
organization be it the conflict or pressures from supervisors or conflict amongst the
peers of the employees. Career development is yet another critical factor to be
considered besides jobs rotation as it is not fair treatment of having an employee at the
same grade throughout the employment without any career advancement incentives.

5.3 Job demands

Job demands consist of the psychological, social and organizational aspects of the job
that need an individual’s physical and psychological efforts. Although majority of the job
stress models indicated that job demands may bring adverse implication but certain job
demand resulted into a positive effects of motivation. For example giving an employee’s
challenge in job enrichment and expanded responsibility could improve motivation thus
increase productivity. Distribution of heavy workload as well as a clearer job
classification could improve further the concentration of employees rather than having
job ambiguity. All in all meeting the job demand would definitely reduce the intention to
quit as it improved comfort and minimizing complexity of such jobs given.

5.4 Organizational commitment

The support from management or organizational support is detrimental as the de facto

in employee retention strategies. In the absence of management support then the
initiative to retain talent would be in waste. Employees are quite appreciative of the
management give the support they need and thus created mutual trust amongst the
employees. When the concept of trust is in place the reaction can be seen from the
increase commitment and dedication of employees in completing all task assigned in
the most perfect manner possible.

5.5 Analysis on the relationship between variables.

5.5.1 Work engagement and turnover intention

According to Lin and Liu (2017), work engagement has a negative relationship with
turnover intention. It can be a useful tool in predicting the turnover intention amongst
employees. This can be proven in the case when an employee is fully immersed in his

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or her work, they would not leave their current job. Saks (2006) reiterated when an
employee is occupied with positive energy and fully immersed in his or her work, he or
she tends to have no time and space to think of negative thought, such as having
thought to quit the organization. Satisfaction in job and environment would eliminate the
intention to quit.

5.5.2 Relationship between job demands and turnover intention

Job demands have a positive relationship with turnover intention (Asiwe, Hill &
Jorgensen, 2015). Job stress occurs when employees workload exceed its own
capability and beyond handling. Overloaded workload and the absence of specific job
resources will trigger a turnover intention due to burnout and stress.

In overcoming these issue, the management should look into distribution of job, job
responsibility and quantify the allocated job to employees. Furthermore, ensuring that all
working tools and resources are adequate would reduce the dissatisfaction and
probably retain the talent in the organization. Job ambiguity is another dimension of job
demands. The role ambiguity could lead to the lower level of confidence and if it is
prolonged would strike the emotion of turnover intention (González-Ponce, Sánchez-
Miguel, Ivarsson and García-Calvo (2015).

Unclear role leaves the employees in uncertainty and cannot move forward in making
any decision or obliging towards supervisor‘s expectation and organization orientation of
work. Therefore, the introduction of job description would ease the ambiguity in
understanding the role of each employee.

5.5.3 Relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intention

Previous research had found out that organizational commitment has a negative
relationship with turnover intention (Jehanzeb, Rasheed & Rasheed, 2013). According
to Tnay, Othman, Siong and Lim (2013), when the employees’ values are similar with
the organization’s goals, it would result in their willingness to stay in the organization
instead of leaving. On the other side of the coin, if the employees had some grievances
as well as dissatisfaction on the management policy such as employment or certain
changes in employment policy they will tend to have the turnover intention by having

18
plan to leave their current organization. For example, the lifting of compassionate leave
might trigger dissatisfaction amongst some of the employees that might resulted to
voluntary turnover or hoping to another organization if the opportunity permits.

5.6 Job training

One of the retention strategy would succumb to the development of employees in order
to improve the existing skills or act as development in new area of business orientation.
Training improves the ability of employees in problem-solving, making them confident
and motivated and committed to their job and thus they are more likely to remain with
the organization.

Re-training would expand the mind of employees as well as give new dimension of skill,
thought and improvement in jobs practices. This is supported by Cloutier et al. (2015)
that training and development are a kind of motivational tool for employee retention by
raising the commitment and motivation of employees towards the job and organization.

6.0 Summary

This paper has discussed and finds out the determinants factors for employee retention.
There are few strategies need to be applied by human resource management to better
retain their talented employee and reduced implication from high employee turnover.

The strategy that can be applied in employee retention program include amongst other,,
a systematic blueprint that create and foster an environment friendly approaches that
encourages employees to remain employed by having policies and practices in place
that address their diverse needs which include long list of factor for employee retention.
This program sound easy to perform but actually a difficult task to carry out. Another
strategy by the manager or immediate supervisor is to keep their subordinates highly
motivated and proactive involvement in decision making at workplace by fulfilled their
needs. Employee engagement is another strategy should be carry out by the
organization to keep their talented employee working with them for long period.
Employee that is engaged is someone who is fully involved, committed and enthusiastic
about their work thus translated into higher commitment as well as productivity.

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Many organizations more focus on allocation of their resources on external branding
front, meanwhile they neglecting the internal environment, failing to provide engaging,
challenging and appealing work environments. Employee engagement can be achieved
in many ways. Example celebrate achievements to motivate employee to perform
better, this celebration will show that the firm is appreciate much their employee hard
work and will create a feeling happier environment. Therefore, organizational
commitment and support would definitely a recipe for talent retention.

To retain talent is a daunting task apart from recruitment. It is a great lose for an
organization to lose their talented and loyal employee. Furtherance, losing their
employee to the rival or competitor would jeopardizing security information. The factors
that contribute to employee intention to stay in certain organization are multi-factorial.
Therefore, organization should always be alerted on the turnover intention and creating
a dynamic retention program for its sustainability and survival.

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