The effectiveness of human resource management practices on employee retention at national hydrographic centre (NHC)

Abstract

Human Resource Management (HRM) practices play a crucial role in an organization. HRM practices consist of appropriate tools that need to be analysed and suited to the organization's objectives. This paper studied employee retention at the National Hydrographic Centre (NHC) and tested how each selected HRM function can meet its goals. The objective of this study was to explore and examine the training, compensation, empowerment and appraisal practices toward NHC's employee retention. The framework was adopted from Hong, Lam, Kumar, Ramendran and Kadiresan (2012) regarding how to retain the best employees and engage them with the NHC community. Four hypotheses were developed based on this framework, to study the relationship between the four constructs with employee retention. Using Google Form, 251 questionnaires were distributed to NHC personnel from the Sections and Unit under the NHC structure, and 200 questionnaires were returned. Statistical analysis was used to analyse the data. The results showed that all the variables were significant, with β = 0.580 for training, β = 0.452 for appraisal, β = 0.363 for compensation, and β = 0.284 for empowerment. The findings serve as an added value for HRM practitioners and a guideline for future HRM practices to implement new policies an new benefits to the staff welfare and HRM programmes.