Human resource management practices and employee commitment in the public health facilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of Human Resource Management Practices and Employee commitment in the Public Health Facilities. Human Resource Management Practices were conceptualised into reward management, training and performance appraisal practices. Employee commitment was conceptualised into affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. The objectives of this study were to assess the relationship of reward management on employee commitment in public health facilities; to assess the relationship of training on employee commitment in public health facilities and to establish the relationship between performance appraisal and employee commitment in public health facilities. A structured questionnaire was designed on a five-point Likert scale to 302 respondents and 8 respondents were interviewed with an interview guide, the sample size of 310 was selected from a target population of 1600 fulltime employees of Mulago National Referral Hospital. Quantitative data were analysed by generating descriptive statistics and by running correlation and regression tests on the study variables using the statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS). Correlation findings indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between Human Resource Management Practices and employee commitment. Overall findings of the regression analysis indicated that reward management is the highest predictor of employee commitment (55.2%), followed by training (26.7%) and finally performance appraisal by 23.1%. The researcher recommends that hospital management should conduct reward surveys regularly and base staff training needs identification on performance appraisal mechanisms. The study also recommends that performance appraisals should include both assessments of employee’s abilities and plans to increase their performance