A study on factors that influence talent retention among service technicians at Proton Edar Sdn Bhd

The biggest challenge that organizations are facing today is not only managing human resources but also retaining them. Retaining skilled employees plays important role for any organization, particularly in the service industry especially in automotive after sales services. Service Technician tend to leave the area and even profession due to several factors including better offer from competitors, change of work locations, stress and other issues. The shortage of competent service technician has become a big challenge for PROTON Edar’s Human Resource Department. It is even a critical issue in that the demand for service technician is expected to increase and how to retain them has become a topic of great importance to researchers. Thus, it is essential for organization to manage their capable workforce with a specific end goal to increase upper hand. This research is carried out to investigate the relationship between leadership, job satisfaction, compensation & benefits, work environment and career advancement with talent retention among service technician in PROTON Edar. In order to discover factors that have significant impact in retaining the service technician, a survey was carried out among the service technician in PROTON Edar. A total of 242 questionnaires were distributed but only 230 questionnaires were returned and utilized for data analysis. Multiple regression analysis results indicate that only job satisfaction and compensation and benefits were positively related and have significant relationship with employee retention. However, job satisfaction is found to be more dominant predictor to talent retention and considered as the most important variable in influencing the retention of service technician in PROTON Edar. On the other hand, leadership, compensation & benefits, work environment and career advancement were not significant in predicting talent retention among service technician. Finally, implications, limitations of the study, recommendations and conclusion were also highlighted