Work environment, salary and benefit, social job status, government policy, and social facility that influence job satisfaction among youth to work with Rengam Estate / Arina Mahirah Maslani, Mohd Kamaruddin Jaffar & Rosfazihan Baharoom

Malaysia's oil palm sector has grown significantly over the years. The rapid growth in the oil palm sector is not backed up with an adequate workforce, whereby the sector is having a shortage of workers and is currently heavily dependent on foreigners. The non-favourable perception of working in oil palm plantations, which generally refers to dirty, dangerous, and difficult (3D) jobs, has made the locals stay away from this sector's career opportunities. Kulim (M) Berhad's Rengam Estate is having difficulties in meeting its labour requirements. This study uses the SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threat) approach to analyse the issues at Rengam Estate and found several situations that relate to its current conditions. The best solution is to attract the local youth to fill the gap of labour requirements of the estate. However, a lack of interest is shown among the local youth towards these job opportunities. This study aims to determine the relationship of job satisfaction towards work environment, salary and benefits, social status of the job, government policies, and social facilities. The study is to demonstrate that the better job satisfaction, the better is the perception of the youths towards working at Rengam Estate. The approach of this study is a quantitative method using a structured questionnaire. Data was collected using a non contrived setting with a one-shot or cross-sectional time horizon. A total of 367 questionnaire forms were collected and processed using the statistical tool SPSS to test the hypotheses that had been developed. In this study, the researchers found that work environment has a strong relationship with job satisfaction. Social status and salary and benefits have a moderate relationship with job satisfaction. Weak correlations are shown by government policies and social facilities towards job satisfaction. Thus, as the conclusion and recommendation of this study, it is shown that Rengam Estate should improve the work environment and the perception of the social status of the jobs in order to attract the local youth to work at Rengam Estate.