本章包括研究背景、問題陳述、研究問題、研究目的、研究假設和研究意義。

 

大卡車司機周轉率不足和貨車司機是物流業的一個關鍵問題，特別是對那些公司，主要集中在中短途運輸的貨物提供運輸服務。這是因為高周轉率往往帶來重大影響的行業。當公司雇用新的卡車司機時，他們需要花時間招聘卡車司機.。此外，他們還需要花時間采訪司機，以選擇最合適的和潛在的。之后，他們需要時間來訓練司機。由于高周轉率，造成貨運公司難以有效運作，最大限度的拖拉機和拖車的利用，滿足客戶需求，因為在一個特定的運輸公司的火車司機都是由時間驅動的，時間不足也可能使公司達到可用容量發生。

 

CHAPTER 1

 

INTRODUCTION 簡介

 

This chapter consists of the background of study, problem statement, research questions, research objectives, hypotheses and significance of study.

 

Background of study 

研究背景

High truck driver turnover rate and shortage of truck driver is a critical issue in logistics industry, especially for those companies that primarily focus on providing trucking services to transport cargo over short and medium distance. This is because high turnover rate tends to bring significant effect to the industry. When company is hiring new truck drivers, they need to spend time on recruiting truck drivers. Besides this, they also need to spend time on interviewing the driver in order to choose the most suitable and potential one. After that, they need time to train the drivers. Due to the high turnover rate, it caused trucking companies difficult to operate efficiently, maximize the utilization of the tractors and trailers to meet the customers’ requirement because truck drivers in a particular trucking company are changing from time to time and shortage of driver may also occur in the company which can cause the company underutilize the capacity available (Cassidy, 2013).

 

Impact such as high hiring cost can affect greatly on the company’s profitability. This is because the human resource department needs to cooperate with the external recruiters to recruit new truck drivers, thus they need to pay compensation to the recruiters. Besides this, company may also use advertisement to recruit new drivers, thus they need to pay for the cost of placing advertisement on newspaper, advertisement board and etc. When new truck drivers are hired, company needs to provide trainings to them in order to make sure that they perform the task according to all practices that set by the company.

 

Besides this, lower productivity due to new routes, new customers’ requirements, new company policies and etc can also cost the company as high as possible once these drivers have started their work in the new company (White, 2011). According to the American Trucking Association (ATA) report issued in December 2013, truck driver turnover cost a company five thousand dollars per driver (Clark, 2014).#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Many researches have been done in the United States of America to identify the causes that cause truck driver intention-to-quit the job in order to control the turnover rate. According to the research done by Lemay et al (2013), factors such as company’s reputation, compensation, time home, safety and etc are generally the causes that cause truck driver to quit their job (Lemay, Johnson, Williams, & Garver, 2013).

 

These researches are only conducted in the United States of America, thus research shall also be conducted in Malaysia in order to identify the true causes that affect truck driver intention-to-quit from the trucking industry.

 

Problem statement 問題陳述

Low labor turnover rate basically is one of the major objectives that tend to be achieved by the human resources department of the company. This is because low labor turnover rate tends to bring more benefits to the company than high labor turnover rate. With low labor turnover rate, company can achieve higher profit than those companies that have high labor turnover because they spend less to recruit and train the employees in order to make sure that their practices are complied with the rules and regulations stipulated by the management (Kokemuller, n.d.). Besides this, low labor turnover rate also induce higher efficiency because employees are get used to the practices of the company and customers’ requirement. Low labor turnover rate also helps the company in fully utilizing the assets that already available. In the case of trucking industry, low labor turnover helps company to utilize the trucks and trailers that previously purchased for provide trucking services to the customers.

 

However, in recent years, the number of vacancies for trucking industry has been increasing significantly. According to the Labor and Human Resources Statistics Malaysia 2012, vacancies reported to the Labor Department for transportation industry has been increasing for three consecutive years from 2010 to 2012, from three thousand two hundred and eighty three vacancies to eleven thousand one hundred and eighty four vacancies (Ministry of Human Resources, 2012). This phenomenon becomes more serious because of the greater truck driver intention-to-quit that subsequently increase the driver turnover rate. With greater truck driver intention-to-quit, shortage of truck driver becomes a serious issue because it affects the productivity of the logistics company especially those companies that primarily focus on providing haulage service. Besides this, it also affects the profitability of the company due to the high hiring cost that covers the cost of recruitment, cost of training and etc. Customer retention will also be affected by the high labor turnover due to the inability of the company to fulfill the customers’ requirement.

 

Without investigation taken to identify the factors that related to driver intention-to-quit the job, logistics companies especially those that primarily focus on providing haulage service will continue to suffer the cons that brought by the high driver turnover. Thus, there is a need for investigate the true factors that arise the truck driver intention-to-quit the job in order to reduce the disadvantages brought by high driver turnover.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Research question 研究問題

What is the relationship between company reputation and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry?

What is the relationship between compensation and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry?

What is the relationship between time home and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry?

What is the relationship between safety and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry?

What is the relationship between workload and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry?

Research objectives

To identify the relationship between company reputation and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

To identify the relationship between compensation and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

To identify the relationship between time home and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

To identify the relationship between safety and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

To identify the relationship between workload and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

Hypotheses

H1: There is a negative relationship between company reputation and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

 

H2: There is a negative relationship between compensation and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

 

H3: There is a negative relationship between time home and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

 

H4: There is a negative relationship between safety and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

 

H5: There is a negative relationship between workload and truck driver intention-to-quit in logistics industry.

 

Significance of study

This study will provide useful information regarding the factors that related to the truck driver intention-to-quit their job in logistics industry. Thus, it will help the management of the logistics companies to implement the appropriate policy in retaining their truck driver. This study also provides readers an insight on the impact of high truck driver turnover rate caused by intention-to-quit on various aspects of the company and industry. Besides, this study also provides readers the policies that have been implemented by other logistics companies in other countries to control the driver turnover rate in order to minimize the impact brought by the turnover.

 

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 文獻綜述

 

2.1.4 Safety

 

Mejza, Barnard, Corsi, & Keane (2003) recently expanded a well-known definition of safety, stating that “safety of the transportation is the degree of security physical risk either mentality or bodily to life during carrier movements of freight and passengers” (Scott & Graham), and (Donets, 2012) stated safety can be defined as circumstance of preventing causing or feeling hurt, loss and injury. Another definition can be a device as on a machine or a weapon designed to avoid involuntary or risky operation. Safety can be used to name an object whose whole purpose is to avert or dispirit operation of a hazardous weapon or machine without explicit intent to do so. Besides that, Clarke (2003) deï¬?ned safety culture as the core assumptions, organizational member will always concerning about safety issues. Through the belief, mangers, supervisors and workforce are evident in company safety policy, rules and policy. The principle of this definition is sharing of common belief and values that safety is importance for everyone. A proper management of collaboration between advance technological systems and people can achieve effective safety. The motivation of safety culture is the acknowledgement employees’ attitudes and their behavior is vital to safe behavior at work (Ali, Abdullah, & Subramaniam, 2009).#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Stone Raymond (1991) mentions in human resource management, Occupational Health and Safety Acts (OSHA) are aim at preventing labor’s injuries. Human resource manager must provide fully information, training and instruction for employee to perform their work. HR manager task is to making arrangement of training connection with use, handling, storage and transport of plant equipment at the workplace. Besides that, company should maintain the workplace in a safety condition and without risk to health. Safety should be essential part of performance management, a high value organizations must make sure their employees are under safety condition; because employees are the manpower to help the company earn profit. Increase employee commitment, motivation and productivity, reduced operating costs and enhanced public image must always integrate with health and safety objectives with strategic business objectives for organization strivings to achieve competitive advantage (Stone, 2002).

 

2.1.5 Workload

 

Workload define as the amount of work that individual has to do, it can classified into two group which is quantitative (the total amount of work to be done) and qualitative (the difficulty of the task). Spector (1997), defined workload as demands of task placed on the employee by the job. The total amount of the task that assign by the supervisor or employers, excessive of job demands can affect job dissatisfaction. Workers will simply do their task if they receive excessive of job demands, the output of products or services may affected, thus, it may lead to customer dissatisfaction. Other than that, stress which can influence retention. Workload is often studied in two ways. One is qualitative workload, which is the difficulty of job task either physical or mental. It can explain as the mission of task that workers have to complete; Second way is quantitative workload, which means the amount of work that employee complete (Kaplan, 2009). Besides that, Caplan & Jones (1975) and Cobb & Rose (1973) mention workload result when the job requires the fast speed of work, over limit output or concentration. Some of the service industry require a fast speed services to achieve over limit output, they concern about the customer’s reaction. In other way, research specifies workload is not just the total amount of work that make the satisfaction and successes from employee, but also the variety to which employees have to resources to do work well, resources can be total lead time, equipment use in workplace and other supports. Ejaz (2011) mention employees prefer to have less work with them while managers try to increase the production from existing workers by overloading them. In the same way, employees yearning to earn more by minimum efforts while employers try to pay less to the workers to keep the costs low. In this case, performance of employees may affected and some others employees may choose to leave the company and search for another better choice. (Hussain Shah, Jaffari, Aziz , Ejaz, Ul-Haq, & Raza, 2011)#p#分頁標題#e#

 

In this research, we are testing the relationship between workload and intention to quit. Commercial long-haul truck driver are overburdened with work. Work overload is widely believed to be one of the sources lead to the work stress. Research on work overload indicates that it is related to physiological indicators of stress, such as elevated serum cholesterol and increased heart rate to psychological measures of stress (Riggio, 2003). Andrew & Jex(2008) stated number of researchers have proven that is positive relationship between workload, stress and turnover intention, it is a sources of mental stress for employees. Beehr (1992) and Aiello (1999) also found that the significant relationships between workload and stress and stress and turnover, this researcher also assume the stress is the main factor affected by workload and intention to quit. Mackay (2004) said working in stress condition has negative impact performance on their work and health of employees. Employees feel to quit because of heavy workload, it may bring in stress and impact working performance. Workload is the intensity of job assignment; it is the main sources of mental stress for employees. There are many ways that stress sign are reflected in the workplace. Uncertain outcome is normally come out with working in stress (Robinson, 1996). (Hussain Shah, Jaffari, Aziz , Ejaz, Ul-Haq, & Raza, 2011).

 

Leontaridi (2002) mentions workload stress leads to quitting and it comes to upward movement because the better paid jobs are the one incurring the most stress then stress should have no effect on absenteeism. Over workload stress is noxious characteristic of the working environment responsible for impairing employee performance it may be expected that its effect individual quitting decision. Therefor it is useful to consider there is the strong relationship between the over workload stress and intention to quit. (Leontaridi & Ward, 2002)