Impact of HIV/AIDS on Hotel Staff Productivity in Kenya: A Survey of Selected Hotels in North Coast

The gist of this paper was to find out how HIV/AIDS pandemic influence the productivity of employees in Kenya’s North Coast. Although major strides have been made by the government to prevent the scourge, it is evident that many employees in the hotel industry still contract and die from the disease. To this end, the study aimed at establishing the impacts of HIV/AIDS on staff productivity and what people should do/are doing to alleviate the suffering of staff productivity in selected hotels at Kenya’s North Coast. Specifically, the study sought to investigate how absenteeism influences staff productivity, how loss of skills affect staff productivity, how employees’ increased turnover affect productivity and whether employee stigmatization affect productivity. The study reviewed two theories: the economic theory and the theory of planned behavior. Simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting six hotels and stratified sampling to choose 43 respondents. Questionnaires were used to collect the data. The major findings of the study show that a number of the hotels 9 (30%) had lost staff due to the scourge, and 23 (77%) of the respondents concurred that HIV/AIDS illness caused absenteeism in hotels working hours, and 6 (20%) of staff turnover was due to the illness. Apart from undertaking frequent HIV/AIDS campaigns to sensitize the employees on the dangers of HIV/AIDS, and implementing counseling programs, it was recommended that the management should come up with improved strategies of motivating the staff in order to raise their esteem and eventually increase productivity. Keywords: Impact, HIV & AIDS; Hotels; Staff Productivity; Pandemic; Motivation; Absenteeis