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.