Abstract:
Sri Lanka Air Force is the service organization. Premature retirement of aircraft technicians in Air Force has become an alarming concern since it has created a vacuum of competent and skilled technicians to maintain the aircraft fleet. This results to lower the productivity in the organization. Finding causes leading to this issue is timely and important since the sustenance of the service provided by Air Force depends highly on the skilled technicians.
The research focuses on the relationship between premature retirement of technicians and its effects on the productivity in the Air Force and providing recommendations to minimize such retirements in the future. The study was limited to the aeronautical engineering tradesmen in the operational flying formations and technical support squadrons in Air Force. Preliminary data survey was carried out by obtaining data from Air Force Head Quarters for the period 2009 to 2014 on earlier retirement. Questionnaire distributed among 50 technicians working in operational flying formations and technical support squadrons in Air Force to obtain primary data. The data from the questionnaires were fed into the program, IBM SPSS version 20 and the results were analyzed using regression and correlation. Interviews were carried out in order to collect data for qualitative data analysis from Commanding Officers and Officers Commanding Maintenance in operational flying formations and technical support squadrons in the Air Force.
According to the results there is a strong correlation ship between premature retirement and productivity. Therefore, it can be concluded that poor motivation, not giving due recognition for their experience, limited training and knowledge provided for the technicians have direct impact on the intention of premature retirement of technicians which effect the productivity in the organization.
