Employee Empowerment Programs Among International Non Governmental Organizations in the Public Health Sector in Kenya

Abstract

The main objectives of this study were to establish the employee empowerment programs adopted by the international Non Governmental Organizations in the Public Health sector in Kenya and to determine the factors that influence the adoption of employee empowerment programs by the international non governmental Organizations in the Public Health sector in Kenya. The study was designed as a descriptive census survey of these factors within all the 45 international Non Governmental Organizations in the public health sector registered with the Non Governmental Organizations Bureau Kenya. The major findings of the study are that of the surveyed organizations is that human resource management policy includes how to deal with grievances and separation of service. The results also show that 81% of the surveyed organization's human resource management programs include orientation, staff training and development issues. Only five organizations (23.8%) have programs that include a welfare policy. Ten organizations (47.6%) indicated that they had empowerment policies while the other eleven (52.4%) did not have any such policies. The results also show that respondents believe that the characteristic of the supervisor, the characteristics of the employee, the nature of the work, corporate policy on empowerment and the availability of resources are critical factors that influence employee empowerment. It is concluded that international Non Governmental Organizations in the Public Health sector have adopted three programs to empower employees: provision of information, recognition of rights and improvement of capability. It is also concluded that characteristic of the supervisor, the characteristics of the employee, the nature of the work, corporate policy on empowerment and the availability of resources influence employee empowerment within an organization. The recommendation is that that future studies should determine if the level of empowerment of employees has an effect on organizational outcomes as well as why certain empowerment programs are preferred by organization at the expense of other similar programs.