Empowerment and Productivity in the Workplace of International and National NGOs in Gulu District, Uganda

ABSTRACT

This study set out to establish the perception, extent of impact and difference in empowerment and productivity in national and international NGOs in Gulu district. Three null hypothesis were tested:l)Male employees are more empowered than the female, 2) There is significant difference between empowerment practice of national and international NGOs, 3)Empowerment practice leads to more increased productivity in the international NGO workplaces than for the national NGOs. The study employed both cross sectional and corelational survey design. The sample size of 256 selected using Sloven's formula. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted through stratified sampling methods, however, only 220 respondents responded of which 103 were males, 117 females; and 109 were from international NGOs while 111 from national NGOs. In total 130 questionnaires (appendix 3) were directed to professional staff while the interviews target both professional and support staff. Data analysis was done using SPSS and !NOVA for frequencies, mean, standard deviations and Pearson's correlation and regression. Findings indicated that empowerment of female staff was higher (mean 3.110) than of male staff (mean s=3.088), however the female were lower productivity than (mean 3.026) than their male colleagues (mean s=3.038). Further the study also revealed that the extent of relationship of empowerment to productivity of male employees (R2 =0.301) was higher than of female staff (R2 =0.097). However, extent for national NGOs (R2=0.33) was higher than of international NGOs (R2 =0.05). The researcher therefore concluded that female employees feel more empowered than male counterpart with insignificantly less productivity. And that empowerment leads to a higher degree of productivity in the international NGOs compared to national NGOs. Nevertheless, more explanatory variables in the international NGO work place, rather than empowerment alone substantially influence productivity contributing to the weak relationship between the dependent and independent variables in the study. It can also be concluded that gender sensitivity in the work place is vital to unleash the full work potential of employees. The researcher therefore recommended that both international and national NGOs therefore need to find means and ways to design gender sensitive work places for a more empowered and productive work force. NGOs in Gulu continuously build capacity of staff to increase personal mastery, individual and organizational productivity. This will enable them stay ahead of the competition. It also recommended that future study should explore reasons why empowerment and productivity is disproportionately higher for male employees than for the female.