Examining the relationship between selected human resources practices in professional sport coaching

Abstract

Sport in South Africa has grown into an attractive mega-industry that employs many people. Among the different human resources in a sport organisation is the professional sport coach whose job is multi-faceted. The coach plays an important role in helping the sport organisation in achieving its goals and objectives. The management of professional sport coaches requires human resource managers to implement a range of human resources management functions. Among these are recruitment and selection, training and development, compensation, job security and labour relations. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the afore-mentioned functions in sport coaching. The study utilised a quantitative research approach. Four hundred questionnaires were administered to professional sport coaches drawn across from all nine provinces of South Africa. The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (version-22). Frequencies and percentages were used to report on the demographic variables and Pearson correlations were used to examine the relationship between the selected human resources management functions. A positive practical relationship with a large effect was found between recruitment and selection, training and development, compensation, labour relations and with a medium effect with job security. A positive practical relationship with a medium effect was found between training and development, compensation and a large effect between training and development, job security and labour relations. A positive statistical significant relationship was found between compensation, job security and labour relations. The results indicated that all functions need to be considered in the management of professional sport coaches.