INVESTIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT ON EMPLOYEES’ RETENTION (A CASE STUDY OF SAM-ACE PHARMACEUTICAL LIMITED AKODA EDE, OSUN STATE)

ABSTRACT Employee career growth and employee satisfaction have linked employee retention to organizational success through employee satisfaction. Therefore, the study set out to investigate the influence of career development on employees’ retention. The study had four objectives which are to investigate the factors that may likely make organization to lose their expert staff, to evaluate the influence of mentoring and coaching on employee job satisfaction and retention in an organization, to assess the effect of job enrichment on employee commitment, development and retention in an organization and to determine the influence of employee upward mobility, career development and growth options on employee turnover in an organization. The case study for this study is selected staff of Sam-Ace Pharmacy Akoda Ede Osun State. Thereafter, simple random sampling was applied to select 70 respondents using Dillman sample size determination formula. Structured questionnaire was administered to respondents and the contents of the questionnaire were clear enough to elicit accurate responses from the selected respondents. Various hypotheses formulated in study were tested using inferential statistic of analysis of variance (ANOVA). Specifically, all hypotheses were tested using ANOVA coefficient at 5% level of significant. The study concluded that employee retention through adequate career development is important to note that it is sine qua non and paramount for organizations success. It is also concluded that there was a significant positive relationship between Career development strategies and retention of employees in an organisation. The study recommends that the management in various organizations should adopt job enrichment and career planning since it made the biggest influence and reason for high employee retention in an organisation. There should be programs for training and development to improve the skill-set of the staff and thus motivate them to stay for longer in the firm. The managers should employ job enrichment and its elements to break work monotony by expanding on the work dynamics, complexity and scope