Influence of employee commitment on retention in private security firm sin Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

Thechallengeofemployee retentionisa globalproblemthat affectsorganizationsinboth developinganddeveloped countries. Even though a lot has been done towards addressing the problem, the situation has continued to be experienced among private security firms in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The main objective of this study was to determinetheinfluenceofemployeecommitmentonretentioninprivatesecurityfirmsinNairobiCityCounty,Kenya. Theworkenvironmentwasusedasamoderatingvariable.Thestudyadoptedadescriptiveresearchdesign.Thetarget population of this research was 50 private security firms in Nairobi City County registered with Kenya Security Industry Association. Primary data was collected using a close-ended questionnaire. Data was analyzed with the aid ofSPSSversion25.0andpresentedusingdescriptiveandinferentialstatistics.Simpleandmultipleregressionanalysis wasused toestablishtherelationship betweenvariablesand thet-statisticata95%significance level wasadopted in testing the hypothesis of the study. The overall significance was tested using F-test. The studyestablished a positive significanteffectofemployee commitmentonretentionwitharegressioncoefficientof0.799andap-valueof0.000 implying that employee commitment affected retention. The interaction between work environment and employee commitment had aregression coefficientof2.330 and ap-valueof 0.025 implying that workenvironment positively altered the relationship between employee commitment and retention. The study recommends that private security firms ought to put strategies that encourage employees to be committed to their work, to ensure increased retention. The findings of the research will contribute to theory, policy