Top surveys paint gloomy picture of private sector jobs

Three different surveys released over a span of six months have painted a gloomy picture of the country’s job market, with the private sector taking a hit on the rewarding of employees.

The country’s largest employer, constituting about 51.8 per cent of the workforce, is facing the challenge of retaining staff in the face of sky-high costs of attracting new talent.

Surveys by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Corporate Staffing Services, and now Deloitte & Touché also exposed the extent to which businesses are battling to retain staff.

They showed a mismatch between employee expectations and what employers think their staff need, a situation that has made employees prone to leaving organisations at any available opportunity.

“Employees have raised their expectations, which current employers are not meeting, and they hope the next employer would,” said Mr Perminus Wainaina, the managing director of Corporate Staffing Services.

Last month, the human resource consulting firm released a report in which it said private sector employees are the most dissatisfied.

Their counterparts in parastatals and non-governmental organisations are the most contented.

The satisfaction levels in parastatals and NGOs were attributed to low stress levels experienced at work compared with counterparts in the private sector.

According to the study, employee loyalty has diminished, with most workers actively searching for better jobs.

Over 66.5 per cent of the 386 respondents polled see themselves changing and/or searching for new jobs in 2014, while only 33.5 per cent are content with their current situation.

Attention to performance standards, cost management issues, improved profitability, disciplinary policies, and favouritism are the issues dimming the morale of private sector employees.

In stark contrast, the country’s public sector was declared the best employer in February, having overtaken the private sector.

The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra) attributed the observation to a string of hefty stipends offered to public service workers.

The allowances include housing, medical, transport, entertainment, responsibility, hardship, and extraneous allowances.

Kippra’s study, commissioned by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, said a Bachelor’s degree holder in the public service earns an average of Sh83,629, almost double the Sh47,968 they would make in the private sector.

Last November, PwC released a survey called The Africa Business Agenda which said human capital is increasingly becoming the most sought after tool in the region as companies seek talent to drive their expansion strategies.

It said most chief executives in Kenya were worried that they were not offering enough pay to retain talent and stay ahead of the competition in an expanding economy.

“Companies are offering higher pay as a key talent retention strategy,” said Mr Kuria Muchiru, PwC’s human resource leader for Central and Southern Africa, during the release of the survey which was conducted on 31 CEOs in Kenya, 97 per cent of whom agreed that their firms needed to match the compensation levels of their peers to retain top talent.

Last week, Deloitte & Touche released their study dubbed Global Human Capital. It seemed to reinforce PwC’s findings about employers going out of their way to attract and retain talent, especially in senior management and specialised skills.

“This has seen most companies investing heavily in talent poaching for top management at the expense of investing in their businesses,” Deloitte’s senior manager for human capital, Debbie Hollis, said.

Kenya was among the 90 countries that the study covered, sampling 2,500 respondents.