Managing Retention Through Workplace Well Being, Work Environment And Recognition: A Study Among Generation Y Employees In Malaysia

Abstract

Employee retention remains a key challenge among financial institution industry in Malaysia. This is a pressing issue as turnover of the employee trend had increase time to time especially among Generation Y employees. As part of that, retaining talented and vibrant Generation Y employees become more difficult to be managed by the organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of workplace well being, work environment and recognition towards the retention of Generation Y employees in the financial institution sector. The study also seeks to provide the theory-based empirical evidence that the role of employee recognition as a mediator in retaining Generation Y employees. The study used Social Exchange Theory (SET) in order to explain the theoretical rationale of all the retention factors (workplace well being and work environment), employee recognition and employee retention. A total of 302 bank employees representing a range of Malaysian banks in Klang Valley have been determined using purposive sampling. PLS-SEM was utilized in order to explain the relationship among the workplace well being and  work environment towards employee retention as well as employee recognition as a mediator. A key findings emerging from the analysis show that work environment has direct relationship toward retention of Generation Y and recognition play an important role in retaining Generation Y employees as recognition mediate the relationship of both work environment and workplace well being towards retention. The research study had undoubtedly provided in depth understanding that employee recognition plays an important role in retaining Generation Y employees in organizations and they can emphasize the value of employee recognition in their workplace practice.