Staff retention and employee performance in non-governmental organizations in Uganda: case study Community Empowerment for Rural Development (CEFORD)

Abstract

Staff retention is valuable resource to improve organisation performance (Schultheiss, 2017). The study examined the effect of staff retention on employee performance in organisation a case of Community Empowerment for Rural Development (CEFORD). The study was driven by the fact that, retention of staff through career development, recognition and work-life balance influence organisation performance which requires empirical assessment to investigate most significant predictor of performance in the NGO. The study was guided by three objectives which were; to establish effect of career development on organization performance in the NGO; to establish the effect of recognition on employee performance in the NGO; and to examine the effect of work-life balance on employee performance in NGOs, a case of CEFORD. Case study design was adopted with quantitative and qualitative approaches and the unit of analysis were employees at CEFORD. Primary data was collected from 8 informants using interview guide and 60 respondents using questionnaire anchored on 5 Likert scaled range. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS to generate descriptive, correlation and regression analysis while qualitative was analyzed using NVIVO software to generate thematic themes. Correlation analysis indicates that career development (r= 0.760, p= 0.000), recognition (r= 0.601, p= 0.001), work-life balance (r= 0.401, p= 0.001) have positive and significant relationships with the employee performance. Other findings from regression analysis revealed that career development (r= 0.256, p= 0.020) has positive significant effect on organisation performance at 95%. While recognition (r= 0.129, p= 0.120), work-life balance (r= 0.090, p= 0.152). Staff retention explain 31.4% variation on organisation performance (Adjusted R Square = 0.314) while 68.6% is contributed by other variables. The study concluded that staff retention through career development, recognition and work-life balance have significant relationship on organisation performance while only career development has positive significant effect. The study therefore, recommends that directors, managers, supervisors should develop staff career through on job training, work-shops, further education, monitoring, internal promotion to achieve desired employee performance in Non-Governmental Organizations.