A Dissertation Submitted to Mzumbe University, Dar es Salaam Campus
College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of Master
Degree in Human Resource Management (MSc HRM)
Staff turnover is concerned with the number of people leaving the Organization
(Armstrong, 2003).Turnover is further defined by (Robbins, 2005) as voluntary and
involuntary withdrawal of staff from an Organization. This project paper aims to
analyze the staff turnover of international non- governmental organizations (NGO)
and particularly the case of the CARE International Tanzania (CIT)
The success of NGOs is determined by the availability and commitment of efficient
and effective human resources. However, currently most of the NGOs are highly
affected by staff turnover and therefore the quality of the service they provide to the
beneficiaries is affected and the financial and non-financial cost of replacing vacant
posts is significantly increased.
The main objective of this study was to identify major causes and impact of the staff
turnover in CIT. Research survey was adopted to carry out the study; research
methodology of the study included comprehensive literature review, questionnaires,
and purposive interviews.
The study revealed high rate of staffs’ turnover was due to lack of effective
management strategies, since from the period of 2008/2009 to 2010/2011 the total
number of the staffs’ turnover from the CIT is counted to 89.
Results obtained from this study survey have showed that lack of effective strategies,
low salaries, lack of motivation, staff recognition, personnel policy and procedures,
and poor working environment; these factors influenced most NGOs to continue to
experiencing high staff turnover rates that lower the total organization productivity.
The findings of the study also revealed that the causes of their turnover are
combination factors such as better opportunities in other organizations, poor working
environment and learning opportunities.
Based on the study recommended that CIT needs to uplift relationship between staffs
and supervisors, to reduce working beyond normal hours, to provide entertainment
mechanism, supporting staffs with formal human resource management training and
to upgrade salaries.