The influence of realistic job previews on employee retention at the Sacco societies regulatory authority

Abstract

Recruiting of staff is one of the important functions of an organizations HR department and this function determines what type of employees a firm gets and how long they will be willing to remain in the organization upon being recruited. The use of the most effective recruitment tools is therefore an important strategy in the recruitment process. One of the tools used is the realistic job previews which are designed to prevent newcomer dissatisfaction, rather than reduce it after the fact. Many job seekers lack adequate knowledge on the jobs they are applying for and as a consequence they develop certain expectations about the job which are inaccurate more often than not. Indeed in most cases when newly hired employees’ expectations are not met, their performance is compromised and this may eventually lead to them quitting their jobs especially if they do not get the correct picture of the job they are considering. The research objective was to determine the influence of realistic job previews on employee retention at the SACCO society’s regulatory authority. The study used primary data which was collected through a selfadministered questionnaires and the data collected was analyzed by the use of mean and standard deviations while presentations was done using tables, pie charts and percentages. The findings were that RJPs in an organization serve to increase the probability that the employees hired are actually capable of coping with the demands of the job and the culture of the organization. In addition it was found that RJPs allows job candidates to match their needs with what they might encounter on the job and at the same time acts as a form of communication and transmits an underlying meta-message of trustworthiness, honesty and care. A multimedia, multi-stage approach in which the organization uses Schemes of Service and Circulars, video, and live presentation of a more job-specific RJP with medium negativity content at different stages of the hiring process is recommended. The results and implications drawn from this study should be viewed in light of the research method employed such as descriptive nature of the study and s cope. Some of the inconsistencies observed could have arisen from the nature of the sample. The sample came from a single industry and hence the generalizability of the results is limited.