Perceived Job Satisfaction and its impact toward employee loyalty at new higher institution in the Sarawak Corridor Renewable Energy (SCORE) Region

Job satisfaction and employee loyalty are Human resource management concepts that significantly contribute to individual and organizational performance. Both job satisfaction and employee loyalty represents one of the most critical challenges faced by the managers in organization today when it comes to managing their employees. Employees are the most valuable resource for all organizations; the longer an employee works for a company the more valuable it becomes. The aim of the study was to examine the impact of job satisfaction on employee loyalty in case of higher education sector. Descriptive analysis, independent-samples t test and bivariate correlation were employed to analyze a sample of 129 employees from one new higher institution in the middle region of Sarawak. The empirical results showed that career development, reward and compensation, job security and workplace environment have positive significant relationship with job satisfaction and loyalty among the new employees at the private institution. We have also examined the interaction among job satisfaction and employee loyalty among different groups of employees. The analysis revealed that most of the new employees between 21- 30 years old (1 year working experience) have the highest job satisfaction and loyalty indices while workplace environment is the most important factor toward job satisfaction and loyalty among the employees. In this regard, the management of the institution should develop a long term human resource strategies in order to retain the young employees in the long term. This would ultimately contributing to the high performance and productivity of the institution in the future as well as economic and social development in Sarawak.