The Role of Gender in Employee Retention: A Study of Private Hospitals in Karachi

The retaining and draining talent has been the most perplexing saga for the organizations. The corporate arena remained the battlef ield between these two positive and negative challenges. In this regard, several strategies are devised by offering lucrative benef its to the talent to stick around with the organization. The objective of this study was to analyse the role of Gender in retention, with specif ic reference to the private hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan. The study further intended to answer if Private hospitals inclined more to retain male or female employees. Employee’s retention policies are planned to increase the employment agreement and decrease the ample expenses concerned with recruiting and training the employees. After implementing managerial behaviour concepts organization can improve retention charges and reduce the related expenses of high turnover.A descriptive, causal study wascarried out using purposive samplingto conduct an interview with 50 employees with the help of a structured questionnaire. Data were analysed through SPSS applying Regression model to identify key factors influencing employee retention. The two leading hospitals were the focus of the study. The study found the health care organizations had a particularly subjective approach while allocating salaries among male, female employees.Therefore, it recommends to all organizations whether services or industrial, that the improved job setting by no inequity lead to rises the eff iciency of the workers as well as of a business.


INTRODUCTION
Organizations generally haunted by the talent drain. Especially the knowledge-based organizations in the regard have dear cost to bear. The success and failures of the organization heavily depend on efficient human capital. Maertzand Campion (1998) stated "relatively less turnover research has focused specifically on how an employee decides to remain with an organization and what determines this attachment. Retention processes should be studied along with quitting processes. Zineldin (2000, p.28) has observedretainingemployees as "an obligation to continue to do business or exchange with a particular company on an ongoing basis". Denton (2000) reported workers who arecontent with their jobs are more enthusiastic about their job and constantly put their endeavour to develop their organizational consumer satisfaction. Stauss et al., (2001) retention is a client predilections, recognition, obligation, anticipations, and inspiration to refer and desire to retain the behaviour, the earlier the four are being effective retention concepts and later two being behaviour related intentionsPanoch, (2001) stated that organizations nowadays take immense concern to retain theirvalued employees, as they are significant to house competitive edge. Cutler (2001) was reported that one of the most vital loads on the organization today to have talent on board. It is not significant to see who the firm hires but to retain. Steel, Griffeth, and Hom (2002) shows that the reality is mostly ignored, however, the determinants behind to stay and to leave are radically different Amadasu (2003); Taplin et al.(2003) andGberevbie (2008) stated that if appropriate retention strategies are adopted and implemented by organisations workers will certainly stay and exhibit dedication to achieve organizational goal. Acton et al. (2003) the Human resource department has a significant role in retaining its employees. It makes policies for worker betterment such that worker would be pleased to be associated with, and stick around for longer period.This shows that it is not now the maintenance of workers but also the maintenance of appreciated skill. Cascio(2003); Heneman and Judge (2003); Gberevbie (2008) havedocumented that an organization's incapability to devise and applystrategy able of recruitcapableworkers and retain them to attain the organizational goal is one of the majorfaces up a rival organization in the area of presentation.Wisconsin State Government (2005) worker maintenance is a planned effort to develop and groom an environment which inspires people to continue work by having strategy and policy input which favours the several wants. Olowu and Adamolekun(2005) employee maintenancearean attractive, and essential quality effort, which develops a sense of security among any organization, that in turn will make them stay, instead of quit or switch.
Thus irrespective of nature of the organization, a clear employee maintenance policy. Kaliprasad (2006) hasestablished that in spite of the information that a business might attempt to carry all these factors intoconsideration to improveworker maintenance Kaliprasad (2006) piercing out that an organizationaptitude to keep its workerstotally depends ahead on its skill to run them. He establishes out four interlinked processes that are able to be utilized intended for an effectual human resource managingscheme: the motivational procedure; the communicationprocedure; the visioning procedure; and the knowledge procedure. Baker (2006) Baker (2006 stresses that reality, that to retain the talent is more challenging than to hire. Hence the most significant strategy of an organization is to strategize with the emphasisto retain has confirmed that worker retention strategy multiplies the organizational and managerial performance, as keeping capable worker retained is more significant challenge than to hire. Fitz-enz (1990) documented that workermaintenance is not the only component rather the hosts of factors accountableto retainworkers in an organization. For an effective retaining strategy, organizations are required to lay emphasis on compensating, remunerating, work safety, mentoring, growth and favourable employee-employer relation as strategy inputs. Walker (2001) identified seven factors to retain the talent (i) compensation in recognition of performance (ii) working environment (iii) growth and promotion opportunities (iv) individualistic recognition(v) good relationship with fellow workers (vi) work-life balanceand (viii) interactive communication. By combining these factors a policy norm can be established, which eventually increases employee engagement. Kehr (2004) segmented the retention variable into three identical sub-variables, namely affiliation, power and achievement. Affiliation refers to social interactions established and maintained, the upper hand in social circle refers to power, and the excessiveness of individualistic performance over set standards represents achievements. Hytter (2007) documented the components such as individualistic determination to stay around with organization, conviction, dedication, employee loyalty to the organization have a significant and explicit relationship with employee retention. Hytter (2007) further argued that work-related factors such as compensation, growth opportunities, learning opportunities, social and physical working infrastructure, leadership styles and work-life balance have an implicit impact on employee Pritchard (2007) argued that effective training and development program hasa significant impact on employee retention. In an attempt to investigate the determinants of employee retention Eva et al.,(2009) have that individualistic factors such as educational qualifications, work experience, self-perception to lead, attitude towards the learning new skills and work-related pressures are the effective determinants of employee retention.

Gender Gap
Numerous researches have concluded the significance of gender in determining the voluntarily turnover intention among employees. Doran et al (1991) have concluded that female employees are more inclined towards the turnover than their male counterparts. This may be applicable in Asian context particularly in Pakistan; the reason may be women folk in Pakistan consider their income as secondary, as they anticipate the support by their spouses. Therefore the policies pertaining to employees retention do not carry significance stuff for female consideration. However, a study found the reaction to retention among female employees is much sharper than male co-workers (Igbaria& Chidambaram, 1997). They further argued that any retention initiative taken by the employer is often welcomed by female workers. Contrary to that Ahuja (2002) found the retention efforts are welcomed by male workers. The male worker remains conscious regarding the payment policies, promotion initiative and employee well-being efforts. Storch and Reilly (2004) confirmed that female employees perceive gender biases even in the organizations claiming that they are equal opportunity providers. Hence the loyalty to the organization is deteriorating among female employees.
The problems in the gender pay gap have received significant attention from academic and corporate scholars in the recent past (Blau& Kahn, 2017). Several theories and empirical evidence have been documented regarding the gender pay gap and its relationship with retention. Scholars persistently documented evidence, that female employees are being paid less than their male counterpart ( Joshi et al., 2015), even in an executive role (Bertrand &Hallock, 2001).

Retention
Retention refers to a set of policies and procedures, which makes people stay prolong in an organization. The successful organization use to develop such policies which enable the employees to perceive, that their rights are protected and uplifted. Eventually, the retention rate becomes higher.

Career growth
Profession trail refers to the growth of the staff in a company. It refers to a variety of positions a staff moves to as he grows in a company. The staff may move up and down most of the moment but also shift crossways to move to a diverse type of employment function.The career path is used interchangeably with growth steps.

Remuneration
Employment in an organization has been considered an exchange relationship. People as employees supply firm with something of value and in return being rewarded with something of value (Rynes et al., 2000). The return of services may offer several valuable outcomes to the employees, such as the chance to capitalize their gained skill, to contribute, which are monetarily and non-financially rewarded through this exchange process.

Post-Recognition
The conducive and cohesive interaction between staff and management can be a greater source of employee recognition. Eventually, recognition of the high achievers ushers the higher order organizational productivity. Thus it is anticipated that recognition being the core strategic tool with the organization to retain the talent.

Staff Engagement
Staff commitment is a property of the connection between a company and its staff. An "engaged employee" is one who is completely immersed by plus passionate with their job and so takes positive accomplishment to further the company's status and wellbeing.A company with 'high' staff engagement might, therefore, be predictable to better those with 'low' staff engagement, all else being the same. There are, however, ranges of definitions that have emerged around concepts linking to staff engagement. Research has looked at the participation, obligation and output of staff. Company has often had a focus on how to create engagement, rather than looking for objective ways to evaluate it. Care has to, therefore, be taken when looking at some of the data presented around engagement.

Management
Executive in companies is the role that organizes the hard work of public to achieve targets and purposes by existing resources proficiently and successfully.Administration includes planning, organizing, staffing, leading or direct, and control a company to achieve the target. Resourcing includes the employment and handling of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources. Managing is also an academic discipline, a social science whose purpose is to learn community business.the role of efficient and effective management of resource including human capital has a significant influence on employee retention.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The corporate servicing sector in today'scompetitive environment is facing a significant problem of employee retention (Sudhakaranl&Kumarl, 2017).The issue of employee retention among employees in various sectors has been the focal point of investigation (Štěrbová, 2013). There are several factors responsible for this issue (Roy, 2018). Gender in this regard is no exceptional (Macneil& Liu,2017). Mueller and Wallace (1996)numerous studies have been conducted on the role of gender in employee retention, and come up with different outcomes. Phelan (1994), clarifygender inequalityin work recognition do not have any significant influence on job contentfound that work fulfilment was appreciablygreater for female. Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza (2000) in their study found that there wasthe considerable difference among malefemale employees' level of job satisfaction and found nosignificant gender differences in the working environment and recommended that conflict of interest of male and female employees may emerge the gender discrimination. The issue of employee retention in caregiving sector has been studied as a perplexing issue (Holzapfel, 2017). Sloane and Williams (2000) observed that female tend to express the innate difference in satisfaction level.Sousa-Poza (2007) concluded the huge gender discrimination in the industrial sector. Sousa-Poza (2007) while studying gender difference in the level of job satisfaction, it emerged the content level among female employees declined with the passage of time, however, it remained the same among male co-workers. Such state of being discontentment may predict the higher turnover intention. This difference may be because of gender discrimination in various organizational practices.Contemporary studies endorsesuch findings (Ali, 2017;Roy, 2018). Lyness and Judiesc(2001) found that female employees have a higher tendency of quitting or switching the job. The reason was being a problem with work-life balance (Tiwari, 2017). Blau and Kahn (1981) investigated the gender difference in turnover intention and found the high turnover intention among female workers. Particularly in the health care sector (Rakhra, 2018). Donohue (1988) noted work-life balance as a cause of high turnover intention among female workers. Lynch (1992) found in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, no gender difference in normal organizational procedures and practices. However, discrimination in remunerating female employees was visible (McConnell, 2011). Royalty (1998) found female, male turnover differences due to education level.Ineffective organizational learning has also been studied as a predictor of gender inequality (Macneil& Liu, 2017). Sicherman (1996) recommended that afterwardsdirecting for individual and workcharacter, turnover rate of male and female is similar. But sometimes there were major dissimilarities in turnover performancesamong male and female. The professional skills as an outcome of education level among plays significant role to deter the turnover intention among female health care employees (Kim& Sook 2014). Perhapsreproducing these diverseoutcomes, some newresearchesincludingmetaanalyses establish that sex is a fragile predictor of retention (Bryant, Allen, &Vandaman, 2010;BonderBauer,Truxillo, Erdogan, & Tucker, 2007;Gaetner&Griffeth, 2000).
Although the turnover intention among female employees has been studied as higher than their male co-workers, however, the construct is studied in combination with job characteristics the contra findings were concluded (Holtom&Darabi, 2018). Several HR practices promote and demote the employee retention, but the working environment can intervene in the negative and positive HR practice outcomes (Bibi et al., 2018). Sousa-Poza (2007) recommended that retention is inclinedbyworkpleasure; some researches recommend that there are gender discriminations in workpleasure and turnover. A study documented that female employee are more vulnerable to turnover intention, despite the fact having equally competent to their male co-workers (Wardell, Sawyer &Mitory, 2010). The reason may be because of domestic and personal reservations. When the job related a responsibility collides with their domestic commitments, they normally quit the job.
The organizational culture has also been studied as a strong determinant of employee retention. The congenial working environment can promote positive behaviour among employees even in the presence of excessive workload (Sheridan, 1992). In the context of health care services the role of age, gender have been studied as a positive predictor of caregiver employees (Scandura&Lankau, 1997). The role of job contentment of the nurses has been studied as strongly related to nurses retention (Lu, Zhao, & While, 2019). Certainresearches indicated that there are wide and organized gender dissimilarities in retention roundedon particular reasons for turnover (Ferris,Hochwater,Frink,Canty, Berkson&Ferrewe 2001;Theodossiou, 2002;Lee et al., 2008;Lee & Mitchell, 1994;Sicherman, 1996). Some studies concluded significant relationship between job satisfaction, gender, and employee retention (Lee, &Graske, 2001, Lee, Wise, & Fireman, 1996Mitchell, Holtom,Lee& Mitchell, 1994). Royalty (1998), Sicherman (1996) concludedthat overall turnover amountdetermination is imperfect and theoreticallydistorted (p. 502). New ideasforretentionmust be planned. Mitchell andLee (1994) developed a model containing the decision process involuntarily quitting the job; the model involves the psychosomatic process. The unfolding modelindicated that workpleasure may have gaprelated to retention.
The career development programs particularly high profile (HiPo) can play a significant role to retain the talent and usher the level of commitment among them (Malik, Singh & Chan, 2017). Formulate the program to make to the employees to participate in important decision making can induce employee retention (Hyman, 2016). The organization will have redesign the next-generation program to race with future needs of employee engagement (Ludike, 2018). Work engagement in the presence of several increasing demands among nurses has been studied as a severe threat in the Canadian context (Laschinger, 2011). The role of employee engagement in employee retention was indispensable, more the engaged employee more the chances of retaining with the organization (Alarcon, & Edwards, 2011).Taking into account job personal resources,the work engagement and psychological outcomes Xanthopoulou et al. (2009) documented the evidence regarding the engagement. However, the role of gender in this regard has not been focused on the study.
In the context of an academic medical career, the role of gender has been studied, and gender discrimination in career development opportunities was witnessed (White et al., 2003). By employing cognitive model the home, work conflict among women engineers and nurses have been studied, and it was found that the perception considering the work and real-life difference should be reconsidered (Bacharach et al., 1991). Cotter (2017) studied the salary and compensation differences among male and female employees and documented discriminatory remuneration framework. Even though the similar set of responsibilities was witnessed. Lyngsie (2017) focused the several designations, perks and positions of male and female employees engaged in several entrepreneurial activities and witnessedthe difference in compensation framework. McGregor et al. (2017) investigated the various rewarding and compensation systems offered to several distinct and similar positions and documented dissimilarity in compensation packages offered to male and female employees. Based on extensive literature following hypotheses have been formulated for this study: Hypothesis H1: There is no significant difference between male and female employee retention in the health care sector.
H2:There is no significant difference between male and female employee career development in the health care sector.

H3:
There is no significant difference between male and female employee remuneration in the health care sector.

H4:
There is no significant difference between male and female employee position recognition in the health care sector.

H5:
There is no significant difference between male and female employee staff engagement inthe health care sector.

H6:
There is no significant difference between male and female employee management in the health care sector.

Data
The study was conducted to focus ontwo major hospitals of the city i.e. LiaquatNational Hospital, NIBD Hospital. The data was collected through the predesigned data collection instrument. The sample size for the study was 50 employees in both hospitals. Thedatawasanalyzedwiththehelpofthe SPSSpackage.Questionnaires were filled having faceto-face interaction with employees.

Population
Employees working ina private hospital of Karachi were the population of the study. In this regard, the data has been gathered from two privately managed hospitals of Karachi namely, LiaquatNational Hospital and NIBD Hospital.

Sampling technique
Convenient sampling technique was applied as the population frame was not made available. A formal letter for survey addressed to NIBD & LNH hospital was sent to the Medical Director of NIBD & LNH hospitals to ensure the ethical consideration of the study. The extraversion subscale consisted of 6 items (a = .6). In order to analyze whether the variables under discussion are independent of gender or not, a chi-square test is applied using SPSS 20 package. The results show that none of the variables is dependent on gender as their sig values are not less than 0.05. The descriptive statistics show the average score followed by standard deviation on the Likert scale of 1 to 5 for both genders male and female. All the averages for male and female are pretty close. However female response for management has a substantially high standard deviation, of 2.03 compared with other variables, shows a high variation in the response.

Inferential
The output addresses Levene's Test for Equality of Variances of male and female responses and F-statistics for all the variables is less than 4 which depicts that variances for male and female respondents are equal. Followed by equality of average scores of male and female are assessed through independent sample t-test and the output shows that mean difference of male and female respondents are insignificant for all the variables as t-value is less than 2 followed by sig value is not less than 0.05.

DISCUSSION
Findings of this study explore that all the averages for male and female are pretty close. Sousa-Poza (2007) distinguished that "this result has far-reaching consequences because differing job-mobility inclinations between genders affect the probability of being promoted, accumulation of human capital, and wages. Sousa-Poza (2000) sated in the study of 21 countries establish that followingscheming for more than a small number of factors, femininitydifference in workhappiness was important only in the U.S, Switzerland and Great Britain.
Indifference, Wallace and Mueller (1996) sated about lawyerestablish no importantsexdissimilarities in worldwide workapprovalfollowingcalculating for an additionalconstruct, and optional that the claim of inconsistencymightcontain due to replica misspecifications of workapproval in the precedingstudy. Uretaand Light (1992), by the review of youthfulmales and females, establish that females were fewerpossible to give up their job after calculating for unnoticeddifferences.

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The objective of this study is based on the influence of gender affecting employee retention in private hospitals Karachi. Employees are a very important asset of the company. In a work environment where staffs are not capable to apply their full perspective and not appreciated, they are prone to leave because of anxiety and disappointment. They require clear work setting to work in. In a clean environment,the employee can best make use of their potential and recognize their skills. They are devoted to beingan important part of such an organization, reliable workforce and new thoughts for the growth of the organization. All the averages for male and female are pretty close. However, other demographic factors need more focus on employee retention in the health care system. It is marked that the study ofgender perceptiondoes have an impact on employees' efficiency. It was also important to learn that there is a directassociationbetweengender perceptionand staffsefficiency. Therefore, if there would be a suitable gender discrimination strategy in the administrations, then there would be a consistent change in worker productivity and rise in their work inspiration and gratification.

Limitation
Two hospitals are involved in this research. Results cannot implicit to delegate the priority of the broader hospital industry. Due to the limited time, scope, and budget we could not gather enough data. The sample size is not sufficient.

Recommendations
It is recommended that the study should be done to discoverthe causes affecting the retention of managerial and staff of hospitals. This research tells us WHAT the problems are, and WHY these problems have developed among these groups. It is suggested that qualitative studies show to find out the cause of retention. In this research many recommendations were made to increase retaining employees are: y The motivation of employees does not affect if the organization make the organization make compensation policies for both the male and females.
y The organization should not make biased pay policies that may affect employee retention. y Employees' efficiency is not affected by gender discrimination; this is the responsibility of an institution. y Gender discrimination does not affect employees' turnover, this should be making sure by the institutions. y The satisfaction of employees does raise the totalefficiency of the Institute y This study is conducted in two hospitals of Karachi and it has the wide probability to be conducted in other sectors like banking, tourism firm, telecommunication sector, sole proprietorship business, education sector, and restaurants and can be further conducted in Pakistan as well as other countries.