Factors That Influence the Retention of Rural Health Workers in the Hospitals Within Siaya County

Abstract

Every organization is competing to survive in this ever increasingly challenging and volatile market environment, and in order to survive; they need pools of excellent, talented and productive human capital to work in organizations. Due to this, organizations need to provide their employees with suitable benefits such as a good salary, appreciations, good remuneration and other form of benefits. Retaining good workers is critical to any organization and therefore organizations train, offer competitive compensation plans and increase benefits to secure their employees‟ loyalty. Despite these efforts, many organizations experience a shortage of employees and high turnover rates. Thus in this era of employee shortages and increased service delivery demands, it is important to explore factors which contribute to the retention of employees who contribute a wealth of knowledge and experience to their organizations. The objective of the study was to investigate the factors that influence retention of rural health workers in hospitals in Siaya County. The study used descriptive research design. The population comprised of all the medical staff working in hospitals in the County. The study used stratified sampling because of ease of classifying the population into strata‟s. The study used primary data that was collected through self-administered questionnaires. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software and presented using tables and figures. The study found out that training and development, career development opportunities and work environment influenced employees to retention in the hospitals. Compensation and Management Style did not influence employees to retention. Training and development was being used by the hospitals to retain its health workers by orienting and training them when they are employed, releasing employees to attend training and monitoring training and development plans for all employees. Career development in the hospitals gives the health workers opportunities to learn new things so as to build their career goals and at the same time the managers assist in career development which gives imperative outcomes to employer and employees. The study established that the management makes effort to create collaborative environment by caring about the health and safety of health workers however there is no flexibility in scheduling and that the workload was not manageable as the staffing levels are very low.