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Retention Strategies and Lecturers' Engagement in Selected State Universities in South-East, Nigeria

Inemesit N. Ebito (PhD), Madubuike, Emmanuel Soludo

Abstract

Lecturers are an important element of any university system. Through teaching, research, and community engagement, they contribute reasonably to the goals of the university and the general well-being of the students. However, ensuring that lecturers remain positively engaged depends on how satisfied they are with the retention strategies provided by university management. Since this may not be available, retaining lecturers in most universities in Nigeria becomes very challenging. This formed the thrust of this study. This study centers on retention strategies and lecturers' engagement in selected state universities in South-East, Nigeria. The specific objectives of the study are to examine the influence of staff development on physical lecturers' engagement in selected state universities in South-East, Nigeria and to examine the influence of staff promotion on cognitive lecturers' engagement in selected state universities in South-East, Nigeria. Cross-sectional research design was used for the study. The population of the study comprised of 6,930 academic staff from the selected state universities, while a sample size of 378 was determined using the Taro Yamane sample size determination technique. Simple linear regression analysis was used to test the formulated null hypotheses. Findings from the analyses revealed that staff development ($R^{2}=0.614$) and staff promotion ($R^{2}=0.729$) have significant positive effects on lecturers' engagement (physical and cognitive) in the studied state universities. It was concluded that retention strategies that are accessible, timely, fair, and equitable obviously improves lecturers' engagement attitudes. Based on the major findings, it was recommended that the management of the studied universities should continuously engage in staff development programmes, as this will directly enhance lecturers' engagement behaviours, and the state universities should regularly review their promotion processes to align with the lecturers'

Keywords

Retention StrategiesEmployees' EngagementStaff DevelopmentStaff Promotion.

References

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