Effects of Recruitment Practices on Employee Performance in the Cooperative Sector in Kenya; Case of Kenya Union of Savings and Credit Co-Operatives

Many organizations in Kenya and around the world have been in many ways affected by recruitment practices of employees in achieving their set objectives. There has been a need for organizations to understand the role of recruitment in getting the most suitable candidates with the best qualifications and abilities to obtain high performance. The study examined the effect of recruitment practices on employee performance in the Cooperative Sector in Kenya, using Kenya Union of Savings and Credit Cooperatives (KUSCCO) Limited as a case. The study was guided by three research objectives namely determining the extent recruitment sources, recruitment policies and recruitment message affect employee performance in the Cooperative Movement Sector in Kenya. The study adopted a case study research design. The study targeted 177 employees of KUSCCO, from which a sample of 89 respondents was drawn for the study. The sample was selected through stratified sampling technique. Primary data was collected through the use of questionnaires, whereas secondary was obtained through existing literature related to the current research topic under study. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistical tool namely frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation while inferential statistical tools such as correlation and regression were used to determine and explain variable relationship. The study established that all the three independent variables (recruitment sources, recruitment policies, recruitment message) had positive relationship with the dependent variable (employee performance) though weaker. From the regression summary, the Adjusted R2 is 0.662 which shows that employee performance was affected by (r) recruitment sources, recruitment policies and recruitment message. This implies that, there was a variation of 66.2 % on employee performance with recruitment sources, recruitment policies and recruitment message. The 33.8 % remaining implies that there are other factors not studied in this research that affected employee performance. However, taking all recruitment constructs (sources, recruitment policies and recruitment message) constant at zero, employee performance was 1.704. The findings also show that taking all other independent variables at zero, a unit increase in recruitment sources leads to a 0.911 increase in the employee performance, a unit increase in recruitment policies leads to a 0.478 increase in the employee performance, and a unit increase in recruitment message leads to a 0.721 increase in the employee performance. Therefore, recruitment sources contribute more to the employee performance. Following thereof, there need to recruit more female employee so as to balance gender equality, diversify their external human capital recruitment sources, use realistic job preview as part of recruitment massage during advertisement, recruit employees based on their competence to improve their work performance.