Assessing the strategies used to retain employees in soft drink companies: A case study of Kisii bottlers

Abstract

Retaining employees is said to be beneficial to all organizations. The purpose of this study was to examine the strategies used to retain employees in soft drink firms in Kenya. The study was carried out at Kisii Bottlers. The objectives of the study included; to identify the employee retention strategies used by Kisii Bottlers Limited, to determine factors influencing employee retention, to determine the extent to which training influences employee retention, to find out how work environment influences employee retention. The accessible population for this study however was all the 300 employees of Kisii bottlers limited. Both stratified and simple random sampling methods were used to select a sample of 100 respondents to be involved in the study. Questionnaires, interviews and observation were used to collect data. Simple descriptive statistics was used in the analysis of data. These included percentages, frequencies and tabular presentations. Based on the findings of this study, there were more male employees than female employees in Kisii Bottlers. Therefore there is a need to encourage females and attract them to work in the company. Most employees were found to possess O-Level and diploma qualifications. This indicates that employees need to provided with training opportunities to acquire bachelors' degrees and masters' degrees. The study has clearly revealed that conducive working conditions, provision of training opportunities and implementation of employee retention strategies were most likely to influence employee retention in Kisii Bottlers. The management should give attention to retention strategies and should be taken into account in trying to retain employees in the company.