An evaluation of the effectiveness of Retention strategies in Zimbabwean Parastatals. A case study of Zimbabwe National Water Authority

Abstract

The main thrust of this study carried out is to evaluate the effectiveness of retention strategies in Zimbabwean parastatals. Human capital is a precious commodity that plays a pivotal role within the organisation and contributes directly to its success or failure. Central to this philosophy, organisations should craft strategies to retain their critical talent in this cut throat war for talent. The research was inspired by the notion that if employees are satisfied and motivated by the working environment, compensation, career growth, employee relationship and organizational support they are likely to stick around the organisation for a lengthy period of time. This study was conducted at ZINWA which means the research design was a case study. The researcher used convenience and judgmental sampling methods. The information was obtained through conducting interviews and administering questionnaires to 35 respondents and 29 of them responded. The study was approached using the mixed methodology, quantitative data was analysed statistically and thematically for qualitative data. Study results revealed that parastatals have some effective retention strategies in place mostly for the top management which brought dissatisfaction to the lower level employees. Most of the lower levels employees acknowledged that there are other reasons for staying with the organization not because the strategies are effective. In view of this, the researcher recommended that these strategies should cascades to the lower levels. Future researchers in this subject are challenged to further look into this issue particularly on a broader perspective as this research only looked at one organization