Article Published In Vol.6 (May-June-2018)

Moderating Effect of Company Factors on the Relationship between Talent Management Strategies and Employees’ Productivity in Private Sugar Companies in Kakamega County, Kenya

Author : Ooko George Oduor

Organizations that wish to be successful in this highly competitive world are those that systematically and proactively take necessary measures to ensure that they have the needed talents to meet their current and future business requirements. Organizational size and management style plays a critical role in ensuring that talented workforce is managed in the organization. There exist an acute shortage of talent, especially in top managerial positions in private sugar companies in Kakamega County in Kenya. This has resulted in employees’ low productivity leading to talent poaching and talent shift from private sugar companies to public sugar companies and other industrial sectors. Effective talent management strategies coupled with good management style and adequate financial resources are therefore critical for the success of private sugar companies in Kakamega County. This study, therefore, established the moderating effect of company factors on the relationship between talent management strategies and employees’ productivity in private sugar companies in Kakamega County. The study used cross-sectional survey research design. Stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques were employed to enable the researcher to select the respondents from the two private sugar companies in Kakamega County that is, West Kenya Sugar Company Limited and Butali Sugar Company Limited. The target population was made up of 320 respondents out of which 70 were managers and 250 were operative employees’. A sample size of 178 respondents was selected. Interview schedules and questionnaires were used as instruments for data collection. Validity and Reliability of research instruments were obtained by a test re-test method from the pilot study. The researcher undertaken the study in a period between June 2016 and September 2016. The computed Cronbach’s Alpha reliability of the research instrument was 0.834 which is above 0.7 Cronbach’s Alpha accepted in social research. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. Spearman’s rank-order correlation was used to test the relationship between the study variables and multiple linear regression analysis was used in testing the study hypothesis. Data was presented in the form of frequency distribution tables, frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation. The study found out that company factors play an important role in moderating the effects of talent management strategies and employees’ productivity. For a higher employees’ productivity to be realized, organization financial muscle and management effective leadership is needed in formulating, development and implementation of talent management strategies. The study recommends that Private sugar companies in Kakamega County should look into ways of addressing company factors because they significantly and positively moderate the relationship between talent management strategies and employees’ productivity. This entails company managers availing adequate resources to implement talent management strategies and also management goodwill in formulating, development, implementing, monitoring and evaluating organization talent management strategies.

Keywords: Company factors, talent management strategies, employees productivity, primate sugar companies