Staff Attrition and Performance of Selected Manufacturing Firms in Southeast Nigeria

Abstract

This empirical and survey based research has been undertaken in Southeast Nigeria, with the objective of identifying the influence of staff attrition on performance of manufacturing firms. The population of the study consists of one hundred and seventy– seven (177) manufacturing firms. Complete enumeration was adopted and so there was no need for sampling as all the selected manufacturing firms was used. The study used primary data which was collected using one research instrument namely, questionnaires. The secondary data have been collected from books, journals, dissertation and conference proceedings. Cronbach alpha was administrated to test the stability of the scale. Pearson’s product moment correlation techniques and simple linear regression were used to analyze and test the hypotheses. The result of the test hypotheses revealed that staff educational level and working conditions have a significant positive influence on firm’s performance on selected manufacturing firms in southeast Nigeria. The study concluded that staff attrition affect firm’s performance adversely in the manufacturing sector. Hence the most damaging consequences of attrition in the manufacturing sector in Nigeria include; recruitment cost, training cost, impact on the on-going productions or services and most importantly, loss of productivity in the firm. The study recommended that management should improve the working conditions of the staff and also ensure that the right people are in the right jobs, introduce 360-degree performance feedback so that individual staff is evaluated based on performance and not based on educational qualification alone.