Asian Social Science; Vol. 11, No. 10; 2015 ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 126 Explaining Generation-Y Employees’ Turnover in Malaysian Context Abdelbaset Queiri 1 , Wan Fadzilah Wan Yusoff 1 & Nizar Dwaikat 1 1 Graduate School of Management, Multimedia University, Malaysia Correspondence: Abdelbaset Queiri, Persiaran Multimedia, 63000 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail: basset11519@gmail.com Received: September 22, 2014 Accepted: December 26, 2014 Online Published: April 20, 2015 doi:10.5539/ass.v11n10p126 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v11n10p126 Abstract Among the various speculation published in media reports about the reasons why generation-Y workforce in Malaysia changes job frequently include dissatisfaction with pay and fringe benefits, seeking work-life balance, perceived status work-values fit, normative commitment, perceived availability of alternative job and job hopping, This study aims to empirically justify or refute some of the anecdotal information about generation-Y employees’ decision to leave an organisation in the context of Malaysia. Using structural equation modelling with a sample size of 150 respondents, this study revealed that satisfaction with payment and fringe, perceived availability of alternative job and job hopping are significant to generation-Y employees’ intention to quit. Additionally, normative commitment as part of employees’ loyalty is insignificant to generation-Y employees’ intention to quit. This study provides implication to human resource (HR) managers that generation-Y employees’ intention to quit may not be entirely due to HR strategies. Instead, cultural and economic factors play an important role in such decisions. However, there are other reasons that are widely held about generation-Y employees’ intention to quit, which may not be held true or empirically validated. Lastly, normative commitment does not influence their intention to stay or to leave an organisation, as their loyalty is to their personal lives. Keywords: generation-Y employees, intention to quit, pay and fringe benefits, work-life balance, status-work-values-fit, normative commitment, job hopping 1. Introduction Employee turnover continues to be a perpetual issue in any organisation. However, this issue has been described as being unprecedented and acute within the latest group of employees entering the workforce, the generation-Y (Yusoff, 2013; Sujansky & Ferri-Reed, 2009). The high turnover stemming, particularly from generation-Y employees, has been the concern of HR managers within the Asian Pacific region; Malaysia is among them in highlighting this issue in its major newspapers (New Strait Times, The Star and The Edge, among others) and to convey the HR practitioners’ concerns that the turnover among this group is becoming prevalent. To further highlight the extent of turnover among generation-Y employees, several surveys reported that generation-Y employees in the Asian Pacific region have the shortest job tenure compared with other generational workforces (i.e., generation-X and baby boomers); generation-Y employees have eighteen months of average job tenure, compared to 4 years for the other generational workforces (Sheahan, 2008). The issue of the increased job mobility among generation-Y employees is not only problematic to the organisational effectiveness, in terms of the incurred financial and non-financial costs associated with a high turnover rate; but more importantly, posing a threat to the economic growth of the country in several different ways. As statistics show that Malaysia’s youngest employees have been immigrating to neighbouring countries. Approximately three hundred thousand of them belong to the generation-Y workforce, and have immigrated to different countries with approximately 62% of those immigrants are absorbed by Singapore and Australia. Most of these immigrants were once employed in Malaysian organizations (Choong et al., 2013). Such a trend of immigration will inhibit the economic growth in the long run, since generation-Y employees constitute over 50% of the total workforce (Malaysian Statistical Department, 2011). Generation-Y employee’s turnover becomes more problematic in the context of Malaysia, as the country is encountering the issue of talent crunch, or alternatively called the shortage of talents (Downe et al., 2012). During the last few years, most job positions remained unfilled due to the absence of qualified candidates who lack the required technical skills rather than attributing unemployment to the economical shrank (Manpower,