Examining the relationship between job security, compensation and training among professional sport coaches in South Africa

Abstract

Sport organizations are mainly in the business of providing a service - for example sport coaching. For coaches to perform at the optimal level they need, among other things, to be provided with appropriate training and development opportunities to develop their skills, adequate compensation which will lead to greater job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job security. The sport organization therefore needs to shape and align its HRM system to suit the needs of coaches so that it can attract, nurture and retain one of its most precious resources - the sport coach. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between job security, compensation and training among professional sport coaches in South Africa. A quantitative research approach was used for the study. A non-probability convenience sampling method was used to recruit a sample of human resources managers for the study. A two-section structured questionnaire was developed to collect data from potential participants in all provinces in South Africa. Frequencies were used to report on the demographic data and correlations and regressions were used to report on the relationship between job security, training and compensation of sport coaches. A positive practical significant relationship was found between training and compensation (medium effect). A practically significant relationship with a positive large effect was found between training and job security. A positive statistically significant effect was found between compensation and job security. The results of the regression analysis revealed that training predicted positively towards job security, implying that if employees receive more training their job security is higher. The current study provides crucial evidence of the influence of both compensation and training on the job security of sport coaches. From the findings it is evident that training makes a larger contribution to the job security of coaches than compensation.