A study of employee retention strategies and organisational survival in private Universities in South-West, Nigeria.

Abstract

The research focus was on retention strategies and organisational survival. The study identified retention strategies that were in existence in the private universities in Nigeria and investigated the extent to which existing employee retention strategies affect organisational survival in the private universities. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Random sampling technique was adopted with reference to the stratified sampling procedure which ensures proportional representation of the population sub-group to select 600 respondents (100 respondents from each university) from a population of 3,634 academic staff of six private universities in the southwestern Nigeria. The questionnaire was developed with reference to Likert five rating scale where the respondents were provided with optional responses from which to select one that applied to their opinion. Out of 600 questionnaires administered, 549 were found useful for the research work representing 92%. The secondary data were extracted from the records of the selected universities and journals as well as textbook relating to the variables (Independent and dependent). Competitive pay, facilities, dignity and respect, job security, training support, recognition and reward were identified as the retention strategies for the survival of the organisation. Job security should be improved to encourage employees’ willingness to stay and be committed to survival of the organisation, also private universities should endeavour to combine the practice of retention strategy variables and use less of single or selective strategy and to watch its operating cost on retention strategies. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and inferential analysis such as regression analysis and analysis of variance were used to analyse data collected and to test the hypothesis stated at 0.05 level of sig.