In this changing environment, the organization is not only affected but also the employees working in it are also affected too. Human Resources Management has a vital role to play in managing the organization resources and how employees are treated in the organization. Employees are an important asset to every company, business and organization. In fact, the success of every company or business is entirely dependent on the effectiveness of its workforce. A business may invest a lot of resources into its core operations and activities, but without a highly effective human resource, success in the long run cannot be achieved. Although, there is no standard framework for understanding the employees turnover process as whole, a wide range of factors have been found useful in interpreting employee turnover Kevin et al.
Employee or labor turnover is defined as the proportion of a firm’s workforce that leaves during the course of a year. It can also be referred to as the rate at which employee leave employment. There are several ways through which a company or business may improve the effectiveness of their employees. This can be through periodic training programs, constant motivation in the workplace, employee empowerment, promotion and bonus programs, etc. These strategies and activities often require a company to spend a significantly large amount of resources, to ensure that its employees are content with their jobs and work optimally to achieve the set organizational goals and objectives. However, even with the above mentioned efforts, companies and businesses still face the constant threat of high employee turnover rates and thus low employee retention rates. Therefore, managers must minimize the rate of employee’s turnover process, as a whole wide range of factors has been found useful in interpreting employee turnover.
There is a need to develop a fully understanding of the labour turnover, its causes, effects and how to find strategic solutions to this problem. Abassi et al (200) defined employee turnover as the situation of workers around the labour market; between firms, jobs and occupations; and between the states of employment and unemployment. Also, Price (1997) defined turnover as the ratio of the number of organizational members who have left during the period being considered divided by the average number of people in that organization during the period. High turnover may be harmful to a company’s productivity if skilled workers are often leaving. Employee turnover can be caused through an employee being dismissed from the organization or an employee retiring. This may be due to internal and external factors.
Some internal factors include ; organizational structure, reward packages, increase in demand and better working conditions for particular skilled labor in the firm, the social and cultural factors can influence employee turnover externally. Queen of Peace Cooperation Credit Union is situated at Madina and has experienced employee turnover as a critical Human Resource issue in recent times. This is a great loss for the company, given the fact that it has spent a lot of resources to perfect the skills of these employees, only to have them leave the company and render their services to other companies. The efficiency and success of an organization depends mainly on its capacity to retain its employees.
High staff turnover may result in an organization not being able to meet its objectives, loss of business of millions of shillings, loss of customers and it can also spoil the good reputation of an organization. However, it has been observed that there has been a challenge on retaining of employees. In Queen of Peace Cooperation Union there have been incidences where the employees are leaving the organization in large numbers on monthly basis. At times, jumping from one institution to another within the same industry, which results in high cost of undertaking frequent recruitments and training sessions and loss of valuable time to focus on customers.
Recruitment, selection and training are a very expensive exercise for any organization because the company has to spend a lot of resources in recruiting and training. Therefore, staff retention should be key for organization’s survival. ? This chapter includes the method of assessing the need/problem that is employed in the study. It indicates the research design, the workers research instrument, sampling techniques and data analysis. Method of assessing Data collection method can either be quantitative and qualitative data.
Quantitative is used as a “synonym for any data collection techniques (such as a questionnaire or data analysis procedure such as graphs and statics) that generates or uses numerical data “. In contrast, qualitative is used as a synonym for any data collection techniques such as an interview or data analysis procedure such as data that generated or use non numerical data”. The researcher used qualitative method in the design of the study. Qualitative research method involves the use of qualitative data, such as interviews, documents and respondent observation, to understand and explain the problem at hand.
According to Denzin and Lincoln (1994), a qualitative research focuses on the interpretation of a phenomenon in their natural settings to make sense in terms of meaning people bring to these settings. So this method involves data collection of personal experiences, introspections, stories about life, interview, observations, interactions and visual text which are significant to people’s life. The reason for this research is to describe the nature of employee turnover in QPCCU, identify the causes of turnover as well as evaluating employees’ attitude to labour turnover. We collected data from the management and employees.
Interview and personal observation were the instrument used by the researches. The target population of the study consists of all junior and senior staff employees (present and past) personnel of QPCCU. This includes all categories of past and present workers (2015-2018). Madina was chosen for the study because the researcher would have easy access to data. The population will be all senior staff employee and junior employees who will be willing to participate in the study.
Management and senior staff employees were selected because they serve as key informants who could be of tremendous help in providing very vital information and other reference materials necessary for the study. The participants would be thoroughly protected. There would be privacy throughout the entire process. The questionnaire will not require the participants to disclose any personal information. The general purpose or objective of this study is to analyse the natures, causes and effects of employee turnover in Queen of Peace Credit Union (QPCCU). Some specific objectives are to; 1. Identify the causes of labour turnover in QPCCU.
Examine the effects of labour turnover on employees’ productivity. Describe the attitude of employees to labour turnover in QPCCU. The research questions can be formulated in relation to the purpose of the study. This will help us find some possible solutions or serves as a guide to the study. The study may ask questions like; What are the causes of employee turnover in QPCCU? What are the effects of the state of labour turnover on employee productivity? What is employee attitude to labour turnover in QPCCU? The credit union (of which QPCCU takes significant part) makes one of the significant credit unions in Ghana.
Credit unions are not-for-profit financial cooperatives. In the early stages of development of a nation’s financial system, credit unions are used to meet the demand for financial services that banks could not. In order to decrease or solve employee turnover, there is a need to understand and put in place effective and efficient factors to benefit QPCCU and Ghana as a country. The study would also broaden our understanding of the causes of employee turnover on the organizational performance. The study would be of great importance to the top management in coming up with strategies to deal with what is perhaps the number one issue facing the human capital management field, being employee retention. The research will influence review of human resource policies currently and in the future. The study information will assist in identifying motivational gaps and demonstrates ways of mitigation. As a result of the findings of QPCCU will work towards improving employee satisfaction by meeting their needs and therefore improved performance.
