Relationship between job satisfaction and retention among oil palm plantation workers. Comparison between local and foreign workers: case of TDM Plantation Sdn Bhd / Khairunnisa Nadiah Ismail and Mohd Kahar Mukktarudin

This study intends to look at the relationship between job satisfaction and retention among oil palm plantation workers and the comparison between local and foreign workers in Terengganu Development Management Sdn Bhd plantation. Our research results indicate the retention, motivation, leadership, organizational culture and Pay and Benefit cause positive effect on plantation workers job satisfaction. The results shows motivation has the highest positive effect on Job Satisfaction. It supported the idea of a few researchers that motivation leads to job satisfaction, the main objectives of this study that is to study the relationship between job satisfaction and workers retention, to study the factor that help to retain the workers to work in the estate, and to identify the difference of job satisfaction and retention between local and foreign workers, it is clearly found that as in the hypothesis testing, there are significance relationship between job satisfaction and retention. The factor that has been identified and tested also can influence workers to retain in the estate base on the four retention factors. There are also significance differences of job satisfaction and retention for local and foreign workers. It is identified that foreign workers are more satisfied than local workers. The instrument that was used in this study for the survey is the questionnaire that consists of job satisfaction and the entire retention factor as stated in the theoretical framework. Five points of likert scales has been used in the questionnaire as the multiple choices of answer for the questions given.The completed instrument which is the questionnaire was pilot-tested among a small group of Indonesian and Malaysian workers. The questionnaire already for pilot testing among 60 workers where 30 of them are the foreign workers and the other half is the local workers.