Determinants of Employee Engagement in Limited Human Resource Development Training

The successfulness of an organisation is very much dependent on its workers. Every worker regardless of his or her level; high, middle or low is an asset to the organisation, where he or she is working. Therefore, human capital investment in workers training is an important strategy for organisational development. Realising the importance of workers training, the Malaysian government has established the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) in 1992 and later renamed as Human Resource Development Limited (HRDL) beginning the year 2002. The purpose of its establishment is to train workers under the Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF). However, workers’ participation in training depends on various factors. This article aims to identify workers’ involvement in PSMB training schemes. Analysis uses 817 workers in the selected services sector, namely, information and communication technology (ICT) and hotel collected in 2008/2009 in three areas, Klang Valley, Johor Bahru and Penang. They were selected from the workers list in the companies who had registered with HRDL. Results show that demographic factors, years of schooling and job characteristics are important in determining workers’ participation in HRDL training. The male workers and the Malays are having less benefit from PSMB training scheme compared to the female and the Indians workers. Years of schooling has a negative effect on the likelihood of attending the HRDL training, whereas the workers in the ICT sector have higher likelihood to get involved in the HRDL training compared to the workers in the hotel sector. While participation of the technical and associate professional workers as well as the full-time workers in the HRDL training are found to be higher compared to the services and sales workers as well as the part-time workers, respectively.