Organizations in the global arena, talent development and employee commitment are of increasing strategic importance as it guarantees zero talent outages and business continuity. The study specific objectives were; to evaluate the effect of employee empowerment, career development, on employee commitment at Kenya Forest Service, Uasin Gishu County. The study purpose and specific objectives were informed by resource-based theory and human capital theory which can provide a basis synergizing talent development practices for employee commitment. In a bid to effectively achieve these objectives, the study was descriptive design based on samples drawn from across, Kenya Forest Service in Uasin Gishu County. Census technique was adopted to arrive at the sample size which is 90 respondents. The questionnaire was piloted at Marakwet County conservancy. Validity and Reliability of research instruments were obtained by using the Cronbach alpha. The computed Cronbach’s Alpha reliability of the research instrument of 0.7 Cronbach’s Alpha and above was accepted in the study. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24. Pearson product moment correlation was used by the study to test the effect between the study variables, simple will be used in testing the study hypotheses. Data was presented in the form of frequency distribution tables, frequencies, and percentages. The study found that employee empowerment has a positive and statistically significant effect on the employee commitment at KFS in Uasin Gishu county (β =0.375; p<0.05), career development also had a positive and statistically significant effect on employee commitment at KFS in Uasin Gishu county (β=0.251, p<0.05). The study concluded that indeed talent development is very crucial and indeed very vital in improving the performance of employee commitment in Kenya forest service in Uasin Gishu county. Further employee commitment is can be continuously improved by self-instilled willingness by the employees to zealously contribute towards the attainment of organizational goals. Further, addressing talent development issues in our current parastatals leads to betterment of employee commitment especially in Kenya forest service in Uasin Gishu county. The improvement of the employee empowerment will lead to improved employee commitment. These results imply that all the variables are positive and statistically significant.
Keywords: Commitment, Talent development, strategies and employee empowerment
