NON-FINANCIAL RETENTION STRATEGIES AND LABOUR TURNOVER IN AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING ORGANISATIONS IN UGANDA: A CASE OF MUKWANO GROUP OF COMPANIES, LIRA BRANCH

Abstract

Employee turnover has always been a matter of concern for many organizations. Most of the time, high labour turnover represents great loss to agricultural processing companies. Currently, how to reduce employee turnover is a big challenge for many organizations and most times they have tried unsuccessfully to use financial rewards to retain employees. This research examined the relationship between non-financial retention strategies and labour turnover in agricultural processing organizations using Mukwano Group of Companies (MGC) Lira. The objectives of the research were to establish the contribution of employee support strategies, to examine the influence of employee growth strategies and to assess the effect of work environment on labour turnover in agricultural processing organization; 231 respondents from MGC Lira were selected using simple random sampling and purposive sampling to provide responses. A response rate of 79.7% was achieved and the data collected were both qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed by use of Pearson’s correlation coefficient and regression analysis using SPSS. The study showed that there is a negative statistically significant relationship between employee support strategies, employee growth strategies and work environment with labour turnover. Regression analysis showed that employee support strategies accounts for 2.7% of variance in labour turnover, employee growth strategies accounts for 8.6%, and work environment contributes to 6.6% variance in labour turnover, indicating that non-financial retention strategies accounted for about 17.9% variance in labour turnover at MGC Lira in the last three years. This result shows that all the independent variables are negatively correlated to labour turnover. An improvement in any of these variables reduces labour turnover and a reduction in any of them increases labour turnover. Therefore, MGC Lira and any other agricultural processing organization with similar conditions should improve on their non-financial employee retention strategies in order to minimize labour turnover.