TALENT RETENTION IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS OF MALAYSIA

Abstract

Talent retention in international schools of Malaysia is a critical issue as it is one of the top three industries having high turnover rate in the period of July 2010 to June 2011. According to Michael Page (2015), 84% of the employees in Malaysia have the idea of not staying in the current role in next 3 years’ time or lesser; means that in three years’ time, many organisations will face many
turnover issues. Furthermore, the number of international schools is growing rapidly in Malaysia. Thus, the purpose of this research was to ascertain the relationship between retention factors and talent retention in the international schools of Malaysia. There are three factors included in this study namely, reward management, work-life balance and career progression. This research is a cross-sectional study using quantitative methods based on descriptive research. Convenience sampling is used for the study. Self-administered questionnaires had been distributed online and 362 employees of international schools in Malaysia participated in the survey and this amount is more than the requirement (338 employees) based on Krejcie and Morgan (1970). The questions in questionnaire were adopted after referring to the work of Balakrishnan and Vijayalakshmi (2014), Hasan and Teng (2017), Ladkin and Kichuk (2017), Ng et. al. (2012), Nirmala (2014), Satpal (2016), Simmons (2012), and Turnea (2018). The findings indicated that career progression and work life balance have positive relationship with talent retention, especially career progression which has the highest influence on talent retention, whereas reward management has a significantly negative relationship with talent retention in the international schools of Malaysia. Hence, based on the findings, this research proposed measures to enhance the competitiveness of this critical industry in Malaysia via appropriate retention programs.