Health, Workload, and Autonomy: Key Factors Driving Early Retirement Intentions Among Putrajaya Primary School Teachers

Early retirement intention is one of the critical phenomena happening to teachers globally. Malaysia also faces a similar issue, whereby the number of teachers applying for early retirement keeps increasing year after year, leaving vacant teaching positions all over the country. Consequently, underpinned by the Beehr Retirement Model and the job demands-resources theory, this study is conducted to examine factors that influence the intention to retire early among primary school teachers in Putrajaya, Malaysia. A total of 246 responses from a population of 1,481 teachers in Putrajaya were collected and analyzed through a correlational research design study. This study found that health conditions and workload have a significant and positive relationship with early retirement intentions, in which workload was the most contributing factor to early retirement intentions among primary school teachers. This study contributes valuable insights to the literature as well as other important stakeholders in understanding the factors of early retirement in the hope that they would be able to take necessary actions to overcome this issue in the future.