Employee retention: managing scarce skills in the TVET college sector

Abstract

The context of this study focused on employee retention. Employee retention forms part of the human resource management functions. Human resource management encompasses all functions including recruitment, training, appraisal, rewarding and retention of employees in a workplace. Recruitment and retention is an issue that has interested researchers for many years. Globally, organisations face a formidable challenge of recruiting and retaining talents while at the same time managers must manage the loss of staff. Some professionals leave their employment for other jobs which are obviously out of education and training. The general objective of this research is to establish if the policy and procedure to retain scarce skills professionals in the Sedibeng TVET College sector in the Sedibeng District is effective. A quantitative research approach was preferred in this study. Literature review was also considered to comprehend the context of employee retention, scarce skills and TVET College. Self-administered questionnaire was developed and issued to 120 staff members to collect data. Ten themes were used to categorise the question. Values were used to measure the responses from all participants. The results showed that the Sedibeng TVET College really take care of their staff. The responses also indicated that staff from Sedibeng TVET College were happy to be associated with the organisation.