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

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between staff retirement and organizational performance of selected firms in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Generally, the objective of the study was to empirically investigate how staff retirement relates with organizational performance in terms of productivity and service delivery 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 retirement and productivity of selected firms in Port Harcourt, and; there is a relatively strong negative relationship between staff retirement and service delivery of selected firms in Port Harcourt. The study concluded that the increase and loss of staff through retirement holds negative implications for the performance of the organization and often results in poor outcomes of productivity and service delivery, amongst others. The study recommended amongst other things that management of firms should train and retrain their employees for higher positions in the organizations; hence enabling them assume these positions at the retirement of current occupants, making the organizations remain productive and provide good services continuously.