Factors affecting retention of non-academic employees in selected private universities in Kiambu county, Kenya

Abstract

Employee retention is an important issue that companies should focus on by identifying factors that affect employees retention and move strategically towards improving and implementing necessary policies and procedures in those areas efficiently to retain their employees. The main objective of this study was to identify effect of four factors on non-academic staff in private universities in Kenya; namely work environment, reward systems, employee engagement, and training and development. Organizations continue losing several of their valued staff, as well as incurring losses associated with such separations. They may be unable to pinpoint exactly the reasons behind such leaving. The effect to the company is enormous. In essence, it is difficult for companies to come up with strategies to retain their employees, if factors affecting their retention remain unknown. In previous studies conducted, most of them focus on factors affecting retention of academic staff, and there is less published work on retention of non-academic staff. For the purpose of this study, descriptive research design was used. This design includes surveys and fact finding enquiries of different kinds. It is a description of the state of affairs as it exists at present. To achieve the objective of the research, both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used whereby questionnaires were randomly distributed to the target population in the selected universities non-teaching staff. The data collected was analyzed by use of statistical and computer packages, such as, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), using regression analysis in order to draw conclusions about the population under study. From the regression model, holding all other factors constant (work environment, employee rewarding, training and engagement), the retention of employees would be 0.264. Further the findings showed that a unit increase in work environment would lead to increase in employee retention by a factor of 0.333, a unit change (increase) in employee rewarding would lead to increase in employee retention by a factor of 0.189, a unit change in employee training would lead to an increase in the employee retention by a factor of 0.330 and finally a unit increase in employee engagement would lead to an increase in the employee retention by a factor of 0.334. The study recommends that institutions should embrace training of their employees both the teaching and non-teaching so as to retain them for long.