Perceived factors affecting employee retention at Kenya commercial bank limited head quarters

Abstract

The retention of employees has been shown to be significant to the development and the accomplishment of the organization’s goals and objectives especially in building competitive advantage over other organization in the phase of increased globalization. Today, changes in technology, global economics, trade agreements, and the like are directly affecting employee/employer relationships thus leading to high employee turnovers thereby affecting employee retention in an organization. Retention becomes one of the biggest issues for the Banking industry in Kenya because people are the one who generates profits and considered as the capital or asset of the organization. Few qualified employees have kept on moving from one bank to another in search of better employment terms. As such, human capital has turned out to be an important competitive tool in the banking sector which calls for proper management practices for these resources to ensure sustained bank competitive advantage. The research adopted a descriptive research design. The target population of the study was 355 employees based at the Head office of KCB. The study applied proportionate stratified sampling technique to identify the sample size of the study. Primary data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize the quantitative data by use of percentages and frequencies. Content analysis was used for qualitative data. The study found that compensation of staff, training and development, job characteristics and promotion are important in the organization since they greatly influence the organization performance. This study recommends this study should shed light on how to maintain and retain employee in an organization. Furthermore, the result of the study should help the regulatory, banks managements, and owner in forming their human resource related strategies. Employees of Kenya Commercial Bank should benefit from the study as it would enable them appreciate the factors affecting their retention and how the management should provide incentives to them through offering them a career ladder through which they might progress. The study should generate information that would be used by various HR consultants who have interest retention of workers in order to maintain smooth industrial relations. The findings of the study should also help other researchers who would want to carry out research on factors affecting employee retention in Kenya.