Determinants Of Employee Separation In The Public Sector: Case Of National Police Service, Nairobi City County, Kenya.

ABSTRACT

Employees are the greatest assets in any organization, their contribution in trying to achieve the goals of an institution cannot be underestimated. Hence the pillar of any organization is the human resource department, which deals with hiring these people. They say ‘hire right, get it right’, hiring the competent and retaining them is the most challenging task faced by human resource personnel, since employee separation has been a major issue in most organizations over the years. When employees quit their jobs, it is an indication that something is not right. Studies have been carried out on employee separation but very few narrowed down on the public sector especially the police service. This study therefore tried to look into some of the determinants of employee separation in the public sector, using the case of National Police Service (NPS), Nairobi County. The study objectives included: to evaluate how social life determines employee separation, to examine how job expectations determine employee separation and to assess how work environment determines employee separation in the public sector. The study was guided by two theories; Theory of Met Expectations and Decision to participate Theory. The study employed descriptive survey research design, while the target population will be 1760; commissioned officers, inspectorate, non-commissioned officers and constables, where 10% of Mugenda (2003) was employed to get the required sample size of 176 respondents. Data was collected using structured questionnaires. Data was analysed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) and presented using graphs and tables. Qualitative data was arranged and analysed through themes. The study findings revealed that: social life, job expectation and last but not least work environment determines employee separation in the public sector. There was a statistical significance relationship between the study variables and employee separation at 0.001 confidence level. From the findings, 62% of the respondents agreed that social life determines employee separation, 76% agreed that job expectation determines employees separation and last but not least 68% conformed to the idea that work environment determines employee separation. The study recommends that government should come up with policies that creates conducive working environment for employees to operate well. The public sector management should also be trained on the best leadership styles for them to lead the employees in a proper way. The study ought to be helpful both to the government and policy makers. Policy makers ought to gain from the study since policies governing public sector HRM were addressed in this study. Other scholars and researchers would also benefit from the study, since they would come up with other longitudinal studies to improve the quality of the findings and add value to the content.