Supervisory Behaviour and Work-Life Balance Towards Turnover Intention of Manufacturing's Employees
Abstract
The end of movement control order (MCO) has made it organizations more challenging in retaining employees particularly the transition of employees to work in their office site. Many job searchers in 2022 are looking for businesses who offer competitive pay scales and comprehensive employee welfare programmes, like flexible work schedules. Furthermore, the changes in society have also contributed to change of employees’ need which employees are prefer to have a balance between work and life. Additionally, supervisors also play an important role in lessening turnover intention among employees and contribute in improving the employees’ well-being and condition. This study aimed to examine the relationship between supervisory behavior’s and work-life balance towards turnover intention among employees in manufacturing industry. The results show that there is negative effect between supervisory behaviours and work-life balance towards turnover intention. In order to keep employees on board for a long time, a company must make sure that supervisors play a significant role.
Keywords: Supervisory behaviours, work-life, balance, manufacturing, turnover
Introduction
As the pace of global change continues to quicken, multinational corporations are under increasing pressure to compete for the best talent. Businesses may feel the effects of high turnover intentions in many ways, including but not limited to increased costs, decreased output, and depleted employee motivation. (Alias et al., 2018). Keeping employees around for as long as possible, or at least long enough to finish a specific project, is a key retention strategy (Chin, 2018). In Southeast Asia, since movement control order (MCO) due to Covid-19 has ended, the transitioning of employees back to office has make it more difficult for companies to retain employees (HR Asia, 2021). Moreover, it is also reported that it is getting difficult to recruit employees especially when they are continually prioritized striking a balance between their personal and professional lives in recent years (Jenkins, 2018). Due to the widespread nature of the Covid- 19 pandemic, many industries were forced to operate from home, highlighting the difficulty of juggling work and personal responsibilities. Global Workplace 2021 reported in year 2020, where the pandemic outbreak has started shown the highest number of employee’s daily stress (Armstrong, 2021). Both traditional office work and remote work, such as telecommuting, can have negative effects on employees' ability to strike a healthy work-life balance (Palumbo, 2020).
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between supervisory behavior and work life balance towards turnover intention among multinational companies (MNC) in Malaysia. According to Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), in year 2021, the manufacturing sales has grown at 15.3% but has a decreased in number of employees by 1.1%. Manufacturing industry is one of the main contributors towards the national income and economic growth (Ooi & Teoh, 2021). Furthermore, it is also reported that manufacturing industry has showed a high turnover rate.
Problem Statement
Both academics and businesses have taken an interest in the concept of work-life balance. Employees worried about maintaining a healthy work-life balance have expressed serious concern over this issue (Bataineh, 2019). Moreover, the scholar also mentioned that it is a challenge for human resource management to keep the employees healthy but at the same time able to work efficiently with long working hours. However, recently companies have aware with the need of work-life balance. Some of the strategies implemented by companies in order to assist employees to attain quality of work life is by introducing flextime and compressed work week (Chemirmir et al., 2018). In Malaysia, nine in ten Malaysia employees expected in a post-pandemic era, they are expected for flexible working arrangements to become more common (Paleti, 2022). Employees in Malaysia prefers to allow more freedom with their work and to be offered good salary (Lim, 2020).
However, most superiors still miss the mark that work, and life are knotted which also fail to enhance employee well-being (Jayasingam et al., 2021). Moreover, these superiors also deliberate work-life balance as a trend and avoid to provide it. According to Nguyen et al. (2020), supervisory behavior is one the important predictor to turnover intention. Additionally, they mentioned that supervisor behavior is defined as family supportive supervisor when they encourage subordinates' devotion to their families and, naturally allow for flexibility in managing family difficulties and demands. Supportive managers are those that understand their employees' struggles to strike a balance between their obligations at work and at home.
Literature Review
The role of supervisory behaviours in enhancing worker productivity and satisfaction has been increasingly acknowledged over the past few decades (De Carlo et al., 2020). Supporting employees both emotionally and professionally, as well as creating a safe and productive work environment, and working to enhance their performance are all examples of desirable supervisory actions (Min et al., 2020). Moreover, perceived differences between a leader and their subordinates, as well as supportive behaviour, value congruence, trustworthiness, and personality similarities that affect employee performance, are all components of supervisory behaviours. Existing literature suggests that employees value their co-support supervisor's more than that of their peers or the company as a whole (Naidoo, 2018). However, in some organizations, supervisors seek to exert control over their employees and do not engage in friendly interactions with their staff, causing the latter to be wary of approaching the former with any questions or concerns. Indecisiveness leads to many problems going unsolved, and staff turnover increases (Malik et al., 2020).
Hypothesis 1: Supervisory behaviour will be negatively related to turnover intentions.
Employers are making greater efforts to cultivate the appropriate conditions in which workers can achieve a healthy work–life balance. Both academics and industry professionals are paying close attention to work-life balance as a method of improving workers' health and happiness. According to Wood et al. (2020), the term "work-life balance" refers to a situation in which a person feels happy with both their personal life and their professional life. Moreover, focused participation in a number of roles, with roughly equivalent amounts of time and effort invested in each allows for work-life balance. Therefore, the clear definition of work-life balance is the degree to which one is engaged in one's many roles (Jaharuddin & Zainol, 2019). Consequently, work-life balance has been found to be crucial in attracting and keeping top talent, and more and more businesses are realizing they need to adopt the concept. Typically, a worker who is contemplating quitting is unhappy and unproductive in their current role.
Hypothesis 2: Work-life balance will be negatively related to turnover intentions.
Methodology
A quantitative analysis was used in this study which data was collected through distributing questionnaires. There are 108 respondents from manufacturing industry in Klang Valley has answered the survey. Purposive sampling technique was use which the sampling technique allow researchers to focus with specific criteria rather than random people from the population.
Furthermore, the questionnaire was developed primarily in order to collect quantitative data. A set of questionnaires has been adapted by Surienty et al. (2013). While, for the dependent variable, the items are adopted from Mobley et al. (1978). The respondents were asked whether they have the desire to quit, seriously thinking about quitting, and/or have intention to quit.
The questionnaire has been divided into two sections, where Section A consist of questions related to independent variable meanwhile Section B related to dependent variable items. All the independent and dependent variables were measured using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5 in which 1=strongly disagree, 2=agree, 3=neutral, 4=disagree and 5=strongly agree. The respondents will be asked to rate the statements that describe their turnover intention. Each section contains 3 to 10 questions. Then, all data were analyzed by using IBM SPSS Version 24 by looking at the demographic profile analysis and correlation analysis.
Findings and Analysis
Demographic profile analysis
Table 1 shows that there are 58% female (63 female) and 42% males (45 males) in the sample, giving a total of 108 respondents. It shows that the majority of the respondents are consists of female employees.
Majority of respondents are from 20 years old to 29 years old, which represents 58% while the least respondents are those who are above 50 years old, which represent only 3% (see Table 2).
Most of the respondent for this study are degree holder which is represent 60% (65 respondents) of the respondents. Then, it would follow by certificate or diploma holder which, represent 16% (17 respondents). There are 10% (11 respondents) who are post-graduate and 9% (10 respondents) who hold SPM or equivalent. This result shows that the highest academic qualification of the employees is degree (see Table 3).
Table 4 revealed the majority of respondents (50 respondents) with 46% are working at their company for 1 to 10 years. The second highest are 43 respondents with service less than 1 year which catered 40% from total sample. It is followed by 9 respondents (8%) with service between 11 to 20 years and there are only 5 respondents has been working between 21 to 30 years which only 5% from total respondents.
Correlation analysis
As shown in Table 5, it can be concluded from this research that all of the independent variables are significantly related to the intent to leave a company. The intention to leave an organisation was inversely related to supervisory behaviour and work-life balance. This result was supported by Surienty et al. (2013).
Discussion and Conclusion
A pearson analysis shows a negative and statistically significant relationship between supervisory behaviour and turnover intent, as does work-life balance. This finding was supported by Surienty et al. (2013). It shows that if supervisory support was positive, it will reduce turnover among employees. Iqbal et al. (2020) proposed that supervisory support plays a critical role in determining the turnover intention. Moreover, Nguyen et al. (2020) agreed that supervisory behavior has negative effects towards turnover intention which when supervisory behavior is increased, the turnover intention will be decreased. This study also indicate that work life balance can determine the turnover intentions among employees. According to Suifan et al. (2016), the most important factors in determining whether or not an employee will voluntarily leave their position are their company's policies surrounding work-life balance. Employees will be more satisfied if they have opportunity to manage their work and life matters properly. So employers should develop suitable policy that can support work life balance practices in the company. Faisal et al. (2022) found that work life balance promotes job satisfaction and psychological well-being.
Because of that, it is important for employers to apply work life balance practices in their company in order to ensure that their employees satisfied and perform well.
This result of this study will contribute to the organization especially to attract and retain employees. Human resource might develop policy that focusing on the benefits that is superior to other organization and relevant to the recent employees ‘demand. The result also demonstrated the significance of managers encouraging and supporting their staff and show the important in providing employees with a balance between work and life to employees’ retention.
It has been determined through analysis and discussion of the results of the hypotheses test that there is a negative, statistically significant relationship between supervisory behaviour and turnover intention in manufacturing firms in the Klang Valley. This indicates that manufacturing firms will see a rise in turnover intentions if supervisory behaviour is poor and there is no work-life balance. According to Tennakoon and Herat (2017), since new employees are unfamiliar with the work environment, organizational policies and regulations, and organizational culture, it is advisable for supervisors to be more supportive of them.
Stress at work and an imbalanced work/life schedule may be the main causes of an increase in turnover intention, which has an impact on both individual and organizational performance. Job stress could have a negative impact on workers' health and well-being. The study discovered a significant link between work stress and work-life balance and the intention to leave a company, supporting the idea that both factors have an effect on productivity and employee performance. Additionally, by achieving work- life balance, a firm can achieve exceptional performance since motivated employees perform better because stress and emotional stress are reduced.
A company's most crucial asset is human capital. It determines how it will perform in the future, hence it is crucial for businesses to know how to keep control of this precious resource for continued growth (Fulmer & Ployhart, 2014). A company need to ensure that supervisor plays an important role to retain its employees for a long time. Therefore, it is in line with this study, which validates that supervisory behaviors plays a critical role in order to reduce turnover intentions among employees in manufacturing firms in Klang Valley. This study shows that supervisor will give instruction to the employees how to improve their job, help them to perform job, and supervisor also always acknowledge employees when they perform well.
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Suhaimi, S. A., Seman, K., Hamdan, M. H., & Rosli, N. (2023). Supervisory Behaviour and Work-Life Balance Towards Turnover Intention of Manufacturing's Employees. In A. H. Jaaffar, S. Buniamin, N. R. A. Rahman, N. S. Othman, N. Mohammad, S. Kasavan, N. E. A. B. Mohamad, Z. M. Saad, F. A. Ghani, & N. I. N. Redzuan (Eds.), Accelerating Transformation towards Sustainable and Resilient Business: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Crisis, vol 1. European Proceedings of Finance and Economics (pp. 445-452). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epfe.23081.38