Perceived Relationship Between Career Development and Employee Commitment and Engagement at Nairobi City County Government

Abstract

Assessing workforce attitude is a business imperative. Committed and engaged employees are invaluable assets to an organization as high levels of employee commitment and engagement promote retention of talent, foster customer loyalty, and improve organizational performance and stakeholder value. The development of employees for future positions enables organizations to develop and place employees in positions compatible with their individual career interests, needs, and goals. However, most of the previous studies done on career development did not focus on public institutions. It is against these that the study sought to establish the perceived relationship between career development and employee commitment and engagement at Nairobi County Government. A descriptive survey research design was adopted. The target population of this study were 443employees at Nairobi County government (Nairobi County Government Registry, 2015). Stratified random sampling technique is used to arrive at the sample size. The researcher used a questionnaire as the primary data collection instrument. Descriptive statistics involved the use of absolute and relative (percentages) frequencies, measures of central tendency and dispersion (mean and standard deviation respectively). Frequency tables and graphs used to present the data for easy comparison. The study found that career development practices (career planning, coaching, counselling and mentoring) greatly affected employee commitment and engagement at Nairobi County Government. The study concludes that that the County government has a policy that governs career development for its staff, has put in place coaching practice in developing staff for future positions as an organization. Career counselling which is also a fundamental human resource policy is applied to a greater extent in the County. The study also concludes that management suggests specific strategies to accomplish work objectives by providing junior employee with specific guidance for achieving career goals. This study recommends that the County government should formulation of appropriate career development policies to adequately address the training needs. These include: policy makers in the County moving with speed to give their HR departments’ full mandate to formulate HR policy on career development function which sets guidelines and framework on how to successfully conduct and implement the findings\surveys on career development. Assessment to effectively tackle career development deficiencies and to ensure staff is clear on their career growth.