Factors Affecting Employee Absenteeism in Oil Palm Estate

Abstract

Employee absenteeism is one of the problems in oil palm plantation. This behavior leads to low productivity and high burdening business cost. This study aims to examine, analyze and explain the influence of stress, family issues, working environment and salary to employee absenteeism in oil palm estate. The primary data used in this study come from questionnaire on respondents' stress, family issues, working environment, salary and employee absenteeism. From 90 people as the population, 73 respondents who met the criteria as a sample were chosen by using the Krejcie and Morgan table. The analytical method used is multiple linear regression analysis using SPSS Version 22. The results of this study indicate that there is a positive and significant influence simultaneously between stress, family issues and working environment on employee absenteeism. Family issues has the highest share and proportion 25.8% of the variation in employee absenteeism, so it needs special attention. Performance and productivity for estate workers are very crucial to ensure the estate's operation runs smoothly. So, estate manager shall pay special attention to engage their workers.

Demotivation Factors That Influence Oil Palm Plantation Workers

“…Workers must work in favorable conditions such as health and wellbeing, and safety. The statement is supported by other researchers that also reported the same concept of employees' motivation or morale that can be influenced by the unavailability of excellent working conditions which can discourage them from reporting to their workplace [2].…”

“…Commonly, the remuneration factor depends on the employer since they are the ones who will offer the remuneration such as salary, bonuses, or allowances to their workers. The result of the study shows that among all the other factors that contribute to absenteeism among oil palm workers, wages have the least significance to the problem [2]. Hence, we can say that remuneration that includes salary, bonuses, reward, and allowances does not affect many workers since most plantation companies provided house allowance, health insurance and other allowances to their employees.…”

“…Those employees with low stress management skill will have lower stress control and cannot handle too much workload compared to those with high stress management skill. Compared to those employees that do not suffer job stress, those that are experiencing high stress levels are more susceptible to apply for leave, and along with the increasing workload, the risk of stress tends to escalate too [2]. The rate of stress is growing considerably with earnings, whereas there is also strong evidence that shows stress levels fluctuate according to task.…”

Behavioural Impacts of Workers on Performance: The Case of Malaysian Oil Palm Plantation

“…Previous studies showed that workers' behaviour is crucial in determining the performance of an organization (Wright et al, 2005;Ibitoye et al, 2011;Raza et al, 2014;Nawi et al, 2016;Johari & Jha, 2020;Truong & Le, 2020). Specifically, the studies by Zulkefli et al (2018); Syahlan et al (2020) discovered the influence of workers' behaviour in oil palm plantations on plantation productivity and business cost. To achieve an increase in output, plantations need to have a consistently skilled workforce (Ahmad et al, 2017).…”