The Role of Employee Productivity in Promoting the Sustainable Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia

In the business world, sustainable productivity is an important concept because it allows an organization to succeed. The combined efforts of managers and employees to raise performance levels are referred to as productivity. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) may have materials, labour, and machine/transportation costs as inputs, and products or services of a certain quality as outputs. Sustainable Employee Productivity (SEP) is the amount of output that employees produce in a given amount of time, an important key to a company's survival. Quantitative research method was used in this paper to analyse the factors affecting SEP among SME employees in Malaysia. Existing research tends to focus on one aspect of employee productivity, and this research offers more holistic view by investigating three critical organizational factors (supervisor support, job satisfaction and work-life balance) that impact SEP. Data was gathered using an online questionnaire survey and analysed using SPSS software, which included Pearson correlation, descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression with 248 valid responses collected. The results indicate a statistically significant negative relationship between employee productivity and supervisor support, which is opposite to the hypothesized relationship while there is no statistically significant relationship between job satisfaction and work-life balance in this sample. This study is useful for gaining an understanding of the organizational factors contributing to SEP in SMEs and for contributing to SDG 8 economic growth and decent work.

Sustainable Productivity, Small and Medium Enterprise, Sustainable Development Goal, SME, Organization, Employee Productivity, Management Rules, Malaysian SME.

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