The relationship between employee retention management practices and voluntary labour turnover in five star hotels in Nairo

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that organizations with effective employee retention management practices tended to have low levels of voluntary labour turnover. This study seeks to investigate whether this applies to the five star hotels in Nairobi Kenya. The study conducted a census survey of all the 11 five star hotels in Nairobi, data was collected through questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics and the pearson product-moment correlation found in the SPSS package. The main objectives of the study was to establish employee retention practices used by the five star hotels to retain critical employees and to determine the relationship between employee retention practices and voluntary labour turnover in this category of hotels. The findings of the study revealed that all the five star hotels made efforts to retain critical employees, however the retention practices employed to do so were minimal. On the other hand the level of voluntary labour turnover was found to be low. The study revealed a fairly weak and insignificant relationship between employee retention management practices and voluntary labour turnover, which means that the low levels voluntary labour turnover could be as a result of other factors other than retention practices employed. It is recommended that further studies be carried out to determine other reasons that could be contributing to the low voluntary labour turnover. Limitations and challenges encountered included time constraint and lack of cooperation from some respondents who were not willing to share information as they considered it confidential. It was therefore not possible to collect data from the whole population which was already small.