Factors influencing retention of engineers in power generating project: a case of geothermal power station, Naivasha Kenya
Abstract
The vision of KenGen is “Provision of reliable, safe, quality and competitively priced
electric energy in East Africa”. Its mission is “To efficiently generate competitively
priced electrical energy using state of the art technology, skilled and motivated human
resources to ensure financial success”. Geothermal where this study focused is one of
KenGen area that generates electricity using steam as a source of energy. The
company has been losing skilled and experienced staff to other competitors in the
energy sector. The purpose of this study therefore was to establish factors that
influence the retention of Engineers at the Geothermal Power Project, Naivasha The
objectives of this study were to establish how career growth influences retention of
engineers, how leadership influences retention of engineers, how financial nonfinancial
incentives influences retention of engineers and how organizational culture
influence the retention of engineers at Geothermal Power Project Naivasha. The
significance of the study was to help KenGen to come up with retention strategies so
that they do not continue losing their well trained staff. Descriptive design was used
to achieve the objectives of the study and questionnaires were used as instruments for
data collection. The target population comprised of 80 engineers, 22 supervisor’s 4
human resource officers, 1 operation manager 1 Resource development Manager and
294 support staff all from geothermal power Project. The sample size used was 40.
Data was analyzed quantitatively using statistical package for social science system.
This helped in computation to facilitate description and explanation of the findings of
the study. The study revealed that the factor that influence the retention of engineers
most is career growth 67% followed by leadership 66%, organization culture 64.2%
and finally incentives 48.6%.The study recommends radical improvement in the
implementation of employee retention practices in order to motivate employees,
commit them, improve performance and ultimately achieve organization goals.
Publisher
University of Nairobi