Employee retention and engagement practices in the healthcare sector: A study on medica super-specialty hospital, Kolkata

EMPLOYEE retention and engagement had attracted tremendous attention in management research in recent times. Although research evidence are abundant in sectors like IT/ITEs, retail, financial services comprehensive studies with respect to the healthcare sector are yet to be presented for policy makers and management researchers. Taking this perspective into consideration, an attempt had been made in the present study to identify the casual factors influencing employee retention and engagement in the healthcare sector with special reference to Medica Super Specialty Hospitals, Kolkata a leading healthcare service provider and hospital chain in Eastern India. The study establishes a model based on empirical findings depicting interrelationships between employee job engagement and factors like job attractiveness employee participation, fair compensation and supervisor relations.

The study had used the descriptive research design. Regarding the population 100 employees (working in the Medica Super Specialty Hospital, Kolkata) were considered. The sample size constituted 31 employees from various departments. Data regarding employee perceptions on employee retention and engagement practices were collected by using Convenience Sampling method.

The study had shown that employee participation was considered to have had the highest impact on respondent perception regarding employee retention and engagement. This was followed by fair Compensation and Supervision Relations. Perception on job engagement is having significant correlation with job attractiveness and employee participation Fair compensation had significant correlation with participation supervision relations had significant correlations with Participation.

Due to time constraint and administrative issues of the organization, the sample size had to be restricted to 31. With Medica Super Specialty Hospitals spreading its operations across the state of West Bengal and other cities in the Eastern India, the study could be extended on a wider scale in order to have a clear map of the organization's retention and employee engagement perspective.

The study could form the basis of a wider research in emerging issues of employee retention like social antecedents and organizational culture perspectives which had remained under researched till date.

The paper being truthfully original could be deemed to be a valuable input in terms of adding knowledge in employee retention research literature particularly in the Indian Context.