Explaining the retention of employees through employee satisfaction and motivation: A study about state owned organizations in Cameroon

Working for a state owned organization in Cameroon is of a really high reputation but movement of employees from state to private owned organizations has been on the increase owing to adequate motivation and job satisfaction policies in the private owned organizations to absolutely attract more employees and to push up the economy from below. This study was to examine how employees are retained in state owned organizations in Cameroon. A model showing the correlation among four components was developed and tested. The four components include: job satisfaction, employee motivation, employee retention, and employee turnover. Drawn from the research model were three main hypotheses explaining the four components with a focused and an effectively designed questionnaire which composed of twenty one questions. The number of questions completed by the employees and all levels of management was 450. These questions were completed for the data analysis to mainly evaluate the employee retention in state owned organizations in Cameroon. The method of collecting data was face-to-face and the data collected were analyzed through the use of percentages supported by the research model to test the hypotheses. After some useful data was collected from the respondents on the employee retention in state owned organizations in Cameroon, an in-depth look at the data showed that there were 300 employees and 150 all levels of management. These numbers constituted 450 being the reliable sample size of the research. Correlation analysis was used in the findings and in the subsequent analysis of the research to determine the strength of the relationship among the four factors. Respondents' answers were correlated to key areas of job satisfaction and employee motivation and their challenges on employee retention and employee turnover. The results showed a high degree of dependence of the employees and all levels of management on job satisfaction and employee motivation. The research findings made it clear that the reliability statistics for all variables actually measures the levels of the four factors and there exists a positive correlation among these four factors which include: job satisfaction, employee motivation, employee retention, and employee turnover. The day-to-day supervisors of the organizations should endeavour to consider, unconditionally human resource policies all through the organizations. In doing so, management would achieve job satisfaction and employee motivation. Also, academicians should try hard to make in-depth research on the concept of employee retention. This would add to solutions organizations need to handle employee retention which has become a serious and perplexing problem for all service and product organizations as what the researcher found and written in this study is not sufficient to ameliorate these problems.