The perceived relationship between employee retention and organizational performance at national oil corporation of Kenya

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 emplo yee turnovers thereby affecting employee retention in an organization. Retention has become one of the biggest issues for the Energy Sector in Kenya because human r esource helps to generates profits a nd considered as the capital or asset of the organization. Professional employees have kept on mov ing from one company to another in this Sector in search of better employment terms. As such, human capital ha s turned out to be an important competitive tool in the e nergy sector which call s for proper management practices for these resources to ensure sustained competitive advantage in e nergy o perations making this study to be important for effective management of parastatals in Kenya . The objective of the study was to establish the perceived relationship between employee retention practices and organizational performance at National Oil Corporation of Kenya. The study adopted descriptive survey design as it ensures complete description of the situation thus ensuring there is minimum bias during the collection of data and reduce errors when interpreting the collected data. The study used consensus technique and based its findings on the vie ws of the whole population. NOC has a population of 210 staff as at August 2014. The study used primary data collected thr ough a structured questionnaire. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive Statistics comprising of frequencies, distribution percentages, mean and standard deviation. A s um mary of the findings testing the employee retention practices which are envisaged to enhance employee commitment that ultimately help increase organizational performance . According to the findings generally 80% of employee retentions p ractices are moderat ely applied . The study established that employees are not highly motivated to give their best commitment for better organizational performance. This answers the question of high turnover and low market share experienced at National Oil. The study therefo re recommends radical improvement in the implementatio n of Employee Retention P ractices to motivate employees to be committed in the organisation in order to reduce the turnover and improve performance and ultimately achieve its set goals. The study recommends a similar research to the other parastatals in Kenya to establish if employee retention practices are causing high employee turnover