Perceptions of traning on affective commitment and intention to stay

Abstract

The inability to retain employees is fast becoming a critical issue for organizations all around the globe. Predictably, this is detrimental for organizations as it incurs high financial expenditure, increases the likelihood of knowledge loss and ultimately, the inability to gain competitive advantage. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to seek ways to retain their employees including engineers within an organization. The objective of this study is to determine the influence of engineers’ perceptions of training towards their intention to stay with their organization. To do that, affective commitment is incorporated as the mediator between perceptions of training and intention to stay. The idea is to extend the existing theories on factors that influence intention to stay instead of intention to leave. It is essential to focus on intention to stay as there is an absence of a retention framework which guides research and practice. Particularly, the existing literature on the influence of perceptions of training towards Malaysian engineers’ intention to stay was found to be lacking. The study was carried out by investigating specific variables under perceptions of training to fully comprehend the factors which influence engineers’ intention to stay. The respondents of this study consist of 304 engineers from the manufacturing sector, which were selected through purposive sampling method. By analysing data using Partial Least Square structural equation modelling, it was revealed that only perceived training comprehensiveness influences an engineer’s intention to stay. The results showed that perceived access to training, perceived supervisor support for training, perceived co-worker support for training, and perceived training comprehensiveness have a positive influence on affective commitment. The findings also demonstrated that affective commitment has a positive influence on intention to stay. Conversely, affective commitment mediated the relationship between perceptions of training and intention to stay for four variables, specifically, perceived access to training, perceived supervisor support for training, perceived co-worker support for training, and perceived training comprehensiveness. Theoretically, this study contributed in several aspects, specifically, explored the influence of training towards engineers’ intention to stay with affective commitment as the mediator, identified the specific training dimensions which influences affective commitment and intention to stay as well as investigated the role of affective commitment as the mediator. On the other hand, practical contributions of this study include the realization that training provision does not warrant higher intention to stay and there are various factors which influences employees’ retention rate. In conclusion, this study developed a detailed training framework which concerns the intention to stay among Malaysian engineers. It is envisaged that this study would help researchers to comprehend better on specific training factors which affects employees’ affective commitment and intention to stay.