Research Paper on ‘Impact of Organizational Factors Affect on Retention of Indirect Cadre Employees in Apparel Industry'

Abstract

This research involved predominantly quantitative method supported by qualitative components in retention of indirect cadre employees in apparel industry. Researcher gathered data from a questionnaire and having interviews with some of the employees who have already left their organizations and with some of the heads of departments. The questionnaire basically measures qualitative factors affect on retention of employees. Dignity of factors is measured by ‗Likert scale‘ method. It is a self-administered questionnaire on a basis of similar type of questionnaire used to get information about ‗factors affect on employee retention in the Commercial Banking sector of Sri Lanka, by Edirisinghe U.R (2008) and Minnesota Job Satisfaction questionnaire. Sample was selected, as per purposive sampling method considering the behaviour pattern of labour turnover rate, where factories experience highest labour turnover included in the sample. But in order to identify good practices to retain employees in the organization, garment factories which maintain favourable labour turnover rates also included in the sample. Rest of the category are belonging to indirect cadre apart from machine operators and helpers comprise of people from various departments like HR, Finance, IT, Merchandising, Production, Industrial engineering, Washing, Packing etc. And also positions like executive, senior executive, assistant manager, manager and head of the division/ divisional manager in their respective departments served as unit of data collection on retention and good organizational practices on retention of indirect cadre employees. Quantitative method of research used to collect data. Total of 250 questionnaires used to collect data from 5 selected factories located in Free Export processing Zone, Katunayake. More over data was triangulated having interviews with Assistant managers, Mangers and with 3 employees who have already left the organization. Initially total of 50 Questionnaires were emailed to selected 5 factories for people who have access to internet in the office and basically for managerial level employees. But the response rate was low. Considerable number of responses received after sending the first reminder. Another set of 200 hard copies of questionnaires were distributed among non-managerial workers, but those who are belonging to indirect cadre across all five organizations proportionately. Because there are workers who do not frequently use internet. Response rate was quite good among this category of employees. At the initial stage stratified sampling method used to identify number of questionnaires to be distributed to each factory and then random sampling method was used. 175 questionnaires used to analyse data from total of 194 questionnaires received from respondents. Primary data collected for the purpose of this research study and Secondary data collected for other purposes of analysis.