Strategic Readiness and Performance of Disaster Response Agencies in Baringo County, Kenya

Disaster response in Kenya is often inadequate and characterized by a failure to act on early warnings; the government disaster response has been criticized as neither effective nor adequate. The way in which a company responds to a crisis can be critical to its survival and long-term success. Strategic readiness may provide better crisis response if well-articulated in the organization. Therefore, the main objective of the study was to establish the influence of human capital readiness on performance of disaster response agencies in Baringo County, Kenya. The study adopted the descriptive survey and targeted 13 disaster response agencies which focused on humanitarian relief in Baringo County, Kenya. The unit of observation was 5 managers from each of the 13 disaster response agencies resulting to a total of 65 respondents. The unit of observation was the managers of various departments. The study used the census design for the organizations and will select the management using purposive sampling. Data was collected through questionnaires. Both descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to analyse the data which was then presented in tables and discussed. A pilot study was carried out in Samburu County, to evaluate questionnaire validity and reliability with a target of 7 respondents. To test for the reliability of the instrument, Cronbach’s alpha was used. From the results found, the overall Cronbach's alpha for all the items were above 0.7 implying that the internal consistency of the research instrument was excellent and thus reliable. Data was both quantitatively and qualitatively analysed using means and standard deviation and regression and content analysis respectively. The study findings indicated that there was a strong positive significant relationship between human capital readiness and performance of disaster response agencies. The study concludes that human capital readiness is a predictor of performance of disaster response agencies. The study recommends that disaster response agencies enhance personnel skills through training and mentorship. The study recommends that disaster response agencies should adopt flexible budgetary frameworks that enable the efficient allocation of resources to address urgent disaster needs.