The Relationships Between Human Resource Management Practices, Employee Engagement and Intention to Stay among Manufacturing Technicians

Employee turnover is crucial to be investigated since it diminishes organization effectiveness and impedes the capacity to meet its goals. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between human resource management practices namely training and development, career development, compensation and benefits, performance appraisal and achievement, and employee engagement dimensions of job engagement and organization engagement as independent variables, with intention to stay as direct variable among the manufacturing technicians in a manufacturing group X, of company Y. Survey questionnaires were distributed to the manufacturing technicians of manufacturing group X, company Y (n=184). The study utilized the reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis to examine relationships between human resource management practices, employee engagement and intention to stay. The results showed that all four dimensions of human resource management practices have significant positive relationship with intention to stay. However, compensation and benefits have the highest correlation to intention to stay. The result of the study also found the manufacturing technicians are more engaged to the organization. Intention to stay does not indicate relationship with job engagement. Meanwhile, HRM practices are found to relate more to intention to stay than employee engagement. Multiple regression results of human resource practices dimension
on intention to stay revealed that 15.8% of the variance of intention to stay was explained by the four dimensions of the human resource management practices. On the other hand, 13.3% of the variance in the dependent variable intention to stay were explained by the two independent variables of employee engagement. Multiple regression results also revealed that only 12.5% of the variance in intention to stay were explained by the combined independent variables of HRM practices and employee engagement. The HRM practices is the most significant independent variable, with beta value of .295 and stronger predictor of intention to stay than the employee engagement. In summary, all four dimensions of human resource practices were statistically, postively and significantly related to intention to stay with compensation and benefits being the most significant. Organizational engagement is a stronger predictor of job engagement hence the more profound reason for manufacturing
technicians' intention of stay. The findings suggest management in the organization to be more sensitive in considering additional benefits in light of the ongoing discussion at national level to implement minimum pay in private sector. It is more prudent to allow a number of the recently introduced benefit programs to stabilize. Future research needs to include more diversified samples and
broaden the scope of current research by examining other human resource practices' dimensions.