What contributes to work performance in Malaysia? Government agriculture agencies employee case

• Main Authors: Mohamed Shaffril, Hayrol Azril, Uli, Jegak, Mahmood, Nor Asiah, Ali, Noor Azman, Abu Samah, Bahaman, Othman, Jamilah, Khatiraveloo, Thomas
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: HD Industries. Land use. Labor
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/4094/1/Ha.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/4094/; http://cob.uum.edu.my/ictom/

Agriculture is a well-developed sector in Malaysia. During the Eight Malaysia Plan period, the overall performance of the agriculture sector had improved and this can be seen through the increasing production, value added and exports, driven by the utilization of new technologies, shift to large-scale commercial production, a wider adoption of the group farming system, easier market accessibility and better commodity prices. In The Ninth Malaysian Plan, this sector has been planned to be the third income generator for the country while recently, in the Malaysian 2010 budget almost USD 2 billion has been allocated for agriculture sector.Besides the great effort invested by the government to intensify this sector, do the implementers which are the government agriculture agency employees ready to handle the responsibility given to them? Are they having adequate work performance to strive for the perfection of the tasks given to them? If they have enough, what are the factors that contribute to this? Thus, this study tries to discover it.A total of 180 respondents were involved in this study.All of the selected respondents were employees from ten government agriculture agencies in Malaysia (AAE).The data collection process for this study was completed in two months period where drop and pick method was used.The developed questionnaire was used and pre-tested earlier.The pre test process was done on 30 respondents from Universiti Putra Malaysia. For the purpose of analysis, descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were employed to describe the socio-demographic data of this study while inferential analyses such as ANOVA and Independent-t test were utilized for determining any difference between selected factors and work performance. Independent t-test run indicates that there are significant difference in work performance for factors of age and type of residential while ANOVA employed, proves that there are significant difference for factors of working experience and salary.It can be concluded that younger workers should be trained more through courses to enhance their work performance. It is suggested that procedures to buy a house especially for those from lower income group can be eased.Salary is indeed an important determinant for work performance. To reduce the gap, it is suggested that support staff are allocated more overtime work so that they can seek extra income.