EMPLOYEE WELFARE AND HEALTH WORKERS’ TURNOVER IN BUNGOMA COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

The turnover rate of employees is the greatest puzzling concern of contemporary establishments’ situation. More often employee turnover causes deterioration of quality of service rendered by a given organization over time. The study sought to find out how the compensation to the employees influences the turnover among the health workers in Bungoma County. The study was anchored on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, expectancy and equity theories. The research adopted a descriptive survey research design and employed cluster and simple random sampling techniques to obtain the requisite sample from 594 healthcare workers. The sample comprised of head of health facilities in the county, medical superintendents, medical doctors, sub county directors of health, 22 hospital administrators and further from the county and sub county referral hospitals, clinicians, nurses, support staff and the heads of departments in the human resource County Government of Bungoma. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire while secondary data was obtained from previous studies, libraries, journals and journal articles as well as the worldwide web. The questionnaire was piloted in Kakamega County to test for validity and reliability. Data analysis was done with the help of SPSS, with mean and the standard deviation being the main descriptive statistics used. Qualitative data was analysed using thematic analysis. The analysed data was presented using bar graphs, pie charts, percentages and frequency tables. The study established that Bungoma County was facing a moderately high turnover of highly experienced and dynamic health workers which negatively affected service delivery. The study found that the county lacked proper health workers’ retentions systems which were a recipe for employees exiting and some has intentions to exit. The study also established that it took long for the replacement of employees who had exited, thus affecting service delivery. The study established that the delay in salary payment, lack of proper structures for carrier progression, some qualified employees being put on short casual contracts of three months  or longer and inadequate working facilities contributed significantly to staff turnover. The study recommended the upgrading of working conditions such as annual increase and timely payment of salaries, promotion of staff after a specified working period of time and provision of necessary working tools and equipment.