STAFF RESIGNATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED FIRMS IN PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE

Abstract

The study determined the relationship between staff resignation and organizational performance of selected firms in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Generally, the objective of the study was to empirically investigate how staff resignation relates with organizational performance in terms of profit margin and expansion of selected firms in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The study adopted explanatory survey research design. The research population consisted of 20 selected medium scale enterprises in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. 5 managers from each of the organizations (thus totaling 100 managers) were selected purposively as representative units in the observation. By census study, the entire population was employed as the sample size of the study. The research instrument was pretested on a pilot sample of ten (10) respondents who were not part of the research sample. The retrieved instrument was analysed and the two results were correlated using the Spearman’s rank order correlation coefficient and a coefficient of 0.80 was obtained. Out of 100 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 97 copies of the questionnaires were retrieved. The data obtained from the field were analyzed using Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation Coefficient with the aid of SPSS Version 22.0. The study found that: there is a very strong negative relationship between staff resignation and profit margin of selected firms in Port Harcourt, and; there is a strong negative relationship between staff resignation and expansion of selected firms in Port Harcourt. The study concluded that staff resignation can be a very big blow on a firm’s performance in finance and expansion, especially when they do not practice routine training and retraining, and also institute viable retention strategies. Among others, the study recommended that management of firms should train and retrain staff, and also employ viable retention strategies that will keep employees working for them for a very long time, and also help organizations quickly withstand against the shock of employee resignation.