Issues in managing foreign workers in Malaysia construction industry: Highway construction perspective

Hiring foreign workers has its pros and cons toward construction team. Despite it can fulfil the construction sector needs; it leaves challenges toward contractors in managing foreign workers. The challenges in managing foreign workers are to project managers and managing teams. Project managers need to prepare a set of skilled with diversity management skill and knowledge to lead foreign workforce effectively. The main issues are foreign workers who willing to work do not really have sufficient knowledge in construction. The contractor's main problem in managing foreign workers is to increase the productivity and quality of foreign workers. Other barrier to contractor is communication barrier which is different in languages. Therefore, the aim of this research is to manage and reduce the challenges in hiring foreign workers in highway construction perspective. The objectives of the research are to identify the contractor challenges in managing foreign workers, to identify the impact of hiring foreign workers to contractors and to find the solution in managing foreign workers. A questionnaire survey has been distributed among the contractors and 38 valid data answered by the respondents were analysed. The result of this study is presented in the form of quantitative analysis which is frequency and percentages analysis. It can be concluded that contractor does have issues in managing foreign workers.