RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB STRESSOR TOWARDS EMPLOYEE’S INTENTION TO LEAVE A JOB: A CASE OF CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT IN KLANG VALLEY, MALAYSIA

Abstract

The restaurant industry is growing in Malaysia due to willingness of customers to spend more of their household income at restaurants. Over half of the population belongs to the middle to high income group with growing purchase power and increasingly sophisticated and modern lifestyles. Besides, this phenomenon leads to greater consumption of food and beverages at the wide variety of dining establishments. This trends will boost demand in the food service sector. One of the advantages of this scenario offers huge employment opportunities. Unfortunately, the condition also might increase possibilities of employee turnover. The high rate of employee turnover has become a concern since it troubles the managements due to the high cost that accompanies the turnover. Moreover, evident from previous data stated that Malaysian’s restaurant industry was placed third as the industry with the highest annual average turnover rate. With the interest to uncover the antecedents behind employee turnover, academicians found that intention to leave is the best predictor of actual turnover. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate the role of job stressor towards employee’s intention to leave a job. In this study, role overload (RO), role conflict (RC) and role ambiguity (RA) were used to predict an employee’s intention to leave a job. The primary data of this study was derived from quantitative approach which distributed to employees who were currently working in the casual dining restaurant in Klang Valley area, Malaysia. A total of 560 questionnaires was usable for data analysis. Descriptive and inferential analysis was done by using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) version 22. The statistical analyses used in this study were Multiple Linear Regression analysis and Pearson Correlation analysis. Analysis from the three factors (role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity) indicated that role overload had the most influential factor that contribute to employee’s intention to leave a job which its value (Beta = .258, p-value < .05). Additionally, result found that role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity had statistically significant correlation with an intention to leave a job which role overload had the most positive correlation at significance level 0.01 at (r = .435). Employees of casual dining restaurants with a higher level of job stressor tend to have a higher intention leaving a job which can lead to turnover intention of the organization. The findings that obtained of this study hoped to provide useful information about the employee’s intention to leave a job and it is hoped to help the restaurant managers to better monitor their employees before they leave a job.