Work-life balance practices and staff retention: A case of public health institution in Machakos County, Kenya

Human resources are the life-blood of any organization. Good health among the Kenyan citizenry is expected to play an important role in boosting economic growth, poverty reduction and the realization of one of the social goals in line with Kenya Vision 2030. The aim of this study was to explore the influence of work-life balance practices on the retention of health care staff in public health care institutions in Machakos County in Kenya. The study adopted a mixed research design and targeted all the 772 health care staff in the 156 public health facilities in the eight sub-counties in the county. The population was stratified into 8 main strata consisting of doctors, dentists, clinical officers, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, laboratory technicians and radiographers. Respondents were selected through both purposive and stratified random sampling. Interviews were used to collect data from the officers in charge of sub county facilities and the four hospitals while self-administered questionnaires were used on the rest of the respondents. Data was analyzed with the help of the SPSS programme. The finding was that there is a significant positive relationship between the work-life balance practices and retention of staff in the public health care institutions in the county. These findings thus suggest that there is need for the Machakos county government to look into the issues of work-life balance and put in place mechanisms that would address these issues and thus minimize their negative effects on staff satisfaction and commitment hence retention in the health care institutions in the county.