Extent of adoption of best human resource management practices among private secondary schools in Westlands district, Nairobi County

Abstract

Organizations including schools as achieving good performance is very important to them. This is a continuous and dynamic process and various organizations including schools, are applying various strategies to achieve high performance and remain competitive in the labour market. Adoption of human resource management best practices is one of the strategies employed by organizations towards their achieving success. The research objective was to determine the extent of adoption of best human resource management practices among private secondary schools in Westlands District, Nairobi County. The research design used was descriptive survey. The population consisted of 32 private secondary schools and all were to be studied. Primary data was collected using questionnaires where respondents were required to indicate their level of agreement on each of the variables’ aspects. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis. Frequency distribution presented the information in a more understandable way. The findings showed that the schools in Westlands District, Nairobi County have adopted human resource management best practices in relation to employment security, recruitment and selection, teamwork, compensation, handling of grievances and sharing of information with the staff. Training of staff has not been greatly adopted. The respondents agreed to having staff with the right training for their jobs and conducting on the job training but they have only adopted off the job training and giving of staff a chance to develop their careers while still working to a small extent. In conclusion, the study shows that there was no consensus on the responses received meaning that some schools in Westlands District, Nairobi County have adopted human resource management best practices while others have not. Recommendations from the study are that training of staff be taken into account more by the private secondary schools in Westlands District, Nairobi County and researchers exploring the way forward in staff getting off the job training and a chance to develop their careers while they are still working.