A survey of the extent of outsourcing of human Resource management functions by the public service in Kenya

Abstract

Since the attainment of political independence in 1963. the Public Service in. Kenya has continued to playa pivotal role in the delivery of services to the public. Human Resource Management has been at the centre of activities geared towards better performance and efficient delivery of services to the public. In pursuit of this, the Kenya Public Service has undergone sustained reforms in the management of human resources. The need for these reforms was necessitated by complaints over corruption, bureaucracy (red-tape), slow service delivery, inefficiency and high costs arising from the bloated public service. As part of these reforms, the Kenya Government has considered outsourcing some Human Resource Management functions in order to address the above complaints. It is for this reason that this research was conducted with the main objective of determ ining the extent to which the outsourcing of Human Resource Management functions has been undertaken by the Kenya Public Service. Studies done earlier on the subject have focused mainly on the private sector and ignored the public service in Kenya. This was a census survey targeted at the 29 Kenya Government ministries headquartered at Nairobi. Survey data was collected with the aid of a questionnaire which had both open and closed-ended questions. The questionnaire was dropped and picked later from the respondents who were officers in charge of Human Resource Management in their respective ministries. To assist in the presentation of the large amount of data SPSS, a statistical software package, was used to calculate the percentages, frequencies and proportions. -- IX The findings of the study were that on average, 54.5% of the ministries outsource some of their HRM functions while the remaining 45.5% of the ministries do not. Government policy and the need for confidentiality were the main factors when deciding on whether to outsource some HRM functions. The limitation of this study was that the survey covered Kenya Government Ministries only leaving out the state corporations. The results may have been more conclusive had all Government organizations been studied. It is recommended that research be undertaken to determine the extent of outsourcing of HRM functions in Kenya's state corporations/ parastatals.