Employee Engagement in Personal Health Programmes and Retirement Preparedness among Public Secondary School Teachers’ in Kirinyaga and Murang’a Counties, Kenya

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identified one health goal with over fifty health related targets applicable to all countries irrespective of development level. There is therefore indisputable need for retirement preparedness in terms of personal health programmes since a significant positive relationship exists between retirement planning and retirement satisfaction. Since employee separation planning generally overemphasize financial aspect disregarding the health aspects despite retirees’ health having great implications to individual’s in terms of fiscal and psychosocial well-being. In this regard, retirement being a process that require employees to generally focus planning decisions on the subjective life expectancy (a mental model of the number of years remaining before one dies) it is imperative to provide empirical data on the nexus between personal health programmes and retirement preparedness. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of employee engagement in personal health programmes and retirement preparedness among secondary school teachers Kirinyaga and Murang’a Counties, Kenya. The target population was 1,238 teachers aged 50 years and above and employed in public secondary schools by the Teachers Service Commission in Kirinyaga and Murang’a Counties by 2017. A representative sample of 334 respondents was selected using multistage sampling technique. Data was collected using semi structured questionnaire and interview guide. Logit regression was used to establish the relationships between variables in the study and to test the null hypotheses at P ≤ 0.05 and 95% confidence level. The study indicates that although the sampled pre-retiree teachers were not adequately prepared for retirement in terms of personal health programmes, their engagement in personal health programmes increased retirement preparedness since personal health programmes had a significant positive effect on retirement preparedness of the pre-retirees’ teachers. The reported findings extend the existing understanding of employee separation programmes and raises implications for the various theories that underpins individual employee separation decisions in HRM