Influence of the Political Environment on Human Resource Performance in Private Healthcare Facilities in Nakuru County, Kenya

Abstract

Human Resources Management plays an active and vital role in the success of the reform of the health sector. In Kenya, the healthcare human resource is skewed towards the private healthcare sector in the country. However, the challenge to HR managers is that while most of them are well equipped with knowledge of internal firm characteristics and their effect on the performance of the employees, most of them are not competent in dealing with externalities affecting human resource performance such as the political environment. The present paper will, therefore, focus on the impact of these externalities on HR performance in private hospitals in Kenya and specifically in Nakuru County. The study was guided by the Public Choice Theory and adopted a descriptive survey research design and was conducted in 27 medium sized private healthcare facilities in Nakuru County. The target population comprised the management and staff of the healthcare facilities from which a sample size of 90 respondents was realized using stratified random sampling. Out these 72 participated in the actual study.  Questionnaires were used as data collection instruments and both descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to analyze the data yielded. The findings revealed that the political environment was a factor in the HR performance in private healthcare facilities in the area. The study, therefore, recommended that the private healthcare facilities in the area also needed to carry out sensitization workshops to advance employee rights and also help reduce the influence of political interference in their performance.