Influence of work environment management practices on the retention of staff in public health institutions in Machakos County, Kenya

An attractive and supportive work environment is critical to job satisfaction hence retention. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of work environment management 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 environment management 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 environment 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.