Assessing employee retention strategies at AAR Healthcare Limited Kenya

A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Administration in Healthcare Management at Strathmore Business SchoolOrganizations are facing the hurdles of retaining their most valued employees with the current cutting competition among companies to have team of high performing workers. Studies have shown that the healthcare industry has very high staff turn-over with doctors who are key drivers of the healthcare industry having an average of 3 years’ length of stay in one particular employer. Some health facilities such as AAR however buck this trend. AAR Healthcare is one of the Tier 1 leading private healthcare services provider in Kenya with comparably high employee retention rate. This study assesses various employee retention strategies applied by AAR Healthcare Kenya. The study specifically investigates how work environment, training and development, recognition and compensation and leadership and management of employee strategies have been applied at AAR Healthcare Kenya and their effectiveness. The research applied a quantitative cross-sectional design approach. A multi-stage convenient sampling technique was adopted to select research respondents from the 21 branches and the headquarters with a total population of 343 employees. The findings of study showed that there was a relationship between employee retention and work environment safety, organization culture, leadership management style and reward recognition, all at 10% significance level. Conversely, the number of trainings did not have a statistically significant relationship with employee retention. Additionally, the study found that the employees were happy with the strategies employed to provide a good working environment and also with the organization culture. However, when it came to the reward and recognition and the leadership and management styles, there was room for improvement based on the responses. The study recommends that healthcare practitioners look into their strategies on these key areas the study focused on and especially, in reward and recognition and leadership and management style as this will further increase their chances of retaining their work force. Additionally, this study serves as a benchmark for policy makers on what can be done to help formulate strategies based on retention and offer guidance on what to do to increase employee retention for organizations