Workforce Diversity and its effects on Employee Performance: A Case Of Mbita Sub County Homa-Bay County in Kenya

Abstract

There is a number of legislation that has been passed to shape the way workforce diversity is managed. However, both the employees and the employers still make decisions to break the rules such as equal opportunity employment, affirmative action and even constitutional provisions. In some organization’s the issue of workforce diversity evoke array of emotions since some workers see it as something to be dealt with. It is upon this backdrop that workforce diversity was studied with focus on its effects on the employee performance a case of Mbita Sub County. The objectives of the study were to investigate the effects of gender, age, and ethnicity and education background diversity on the employee performance. In the study different empirical literature were examined to define the relationship between workforce diversity and employee performance in which a gap existed since none of these studies examined was conducted in Mbita Sub County in Homabay County in Kenya. The study was anchored on social identity theory which explains how individuals tend to categorize themselves in terms of gender, age, ethnicity and education background resulting into them (out group) and us (in group). Survey design was used and the sample collected from secondary schools in Mbita Sub County. The data was collected in 28 secondary schools using the set of questionnaire put at the end of this document. Descriptive and Inferential statistics geared to the Pearson’s Product moment Correlation (r) and Multiple Regression Analysis were used to identify the patterns of the relationship in the data. From the findings all the objectives were accepted except for education. From Multiple regression analysis, R 2 =0.667 showed that 66.7% of the variation employee performance is explained by gender, age, ethnicity and education background. The study also explained the managerial implication of workforce diversity and recommended further research since only 66.7% of the employee performance was accounted for by the gender, age, and ethnicity and education background. Therefore there is need to conduct further research to account for the remaining 33.3%