Preventing Turnover Intention: Effectiveness of Servant Leadership in Managing Job Satisfaction

Abstract

This study examines the role of servant leadership in increasing job satisfaction while suppressing turnover intention, both through direct influence and through mediation mechanisms of job satisfaction. The research objects included permanent employees of PT Tri Adi Bersama working in Central Java and the Special Region of Yogyakarta. The study applied a quantitative explanatory approach with a cross-sectional survey design. From a population of 825 employees, analysis was conducted on 173 observations using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method through SmartPLS 4 with a bootstrapping procedure of 5,000 subsamples. The analysis results showed that servant leadership increased job satisfaction positively and significantly (β = 0.614; p < 0.001), and decreased turnover intention negatively and significantly (β = −0.310; p < 0.001). Furthermore, job satisfaction was shown to significantly reduce turnover intention (β = -0.469; p < 0.001) and acted as a complementary mediator in the relationship (β = -0.287; p < 0.001). The research model was able to explain 37.6% of the variation in job satisfaction and 49.4% of the variation in turnover intention. These findings emphasize the importance of employee empowerment, providing individual support, and developing servant leadership behaviors as part of a workforce retention strategy. However, the analysis results are still illustrative because they were obtained from a simulated data set, so retesting using validated field data is necessary.