Thesis Abstract

Impact of Performance Appraisal on Employees’ Job Performance using Keystone Bank Limited as case study. The main objective of the study was to determine whether performance appraisal has any impact on job performance of employees and the extent of such impacts. In service industries e.g. Bank s, the service is fast, more efficient, and product are delivered on time leading to customer satisfaction and more profit are achieved. The researcher adopted the primary method of data collection through the use of structured questionnaire. Research show that performance appraisal has positive impact on employees’ job performance. Moreover, the respondents all agreed that the Behavioural Checklist and Scales Appraisal System was the best appraisal system to be adopted by an organization. Based on the-research findings, the researcher recommends among others that organization and employees must have a clear idea of where the organization is going and employees must understand how their job contributes to the goals of the company. Besides, employees must be given the needed trainings to ensure they have the skills needed to perform their work. Finally, the researcher further recommends that supervisors must give feedback to employees about their performance on regular basis not just at formal appraisal times.

Thesis Overview

INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Employee’s performance appraisal is one of the most critical functions of a leader/manager and is a basic expectation of anyone in a supervisory role. In many organization staff are being appraised to ascertain how much each person contributed to the achievement of corporate goals and objectives. The major objectives are usually profit maximization and service delivery.

Performance Appraisal System has been found to act as strong and indispensable Machinery for increase in organizational productivity, organizational peace and harmony and organizational position in its environment Brown, M., J.S. Heywood (2005:43).

According to Schoenfeld and Shaw (1996) “the evaluation of performance is the control mechanism that provides not only feedback to individuals but also an organization assessment of how things are progressing. Without performance information, managers of the organization can only quess as to whether employees are working towards the right goals, in the correct way and to the desired standard. Performance Appraisal according to then is a means of knowing if employee behaviour is consistent with the overall strategic focus and a way for bringing to the fore any negative consequences of the strategy behavior link” Kuvaas, B. (2006:17).

In their own view Hicks and Gullet (1973 states that “all persons in organization have personal objectives and each person expects that participation in the organization will help him achieve his personal objectives.

Therefore performance appraisal becomes a means of aligning the objectives of the individual employees with the organizational objectives. According to Frankline (2003), there are several reasons for performance appraisal exercise they are to:

To provide feedback to the employee, To clarify job expectations, To determine training needs, To diagnose performance problems and Merit pay or salary adjustment.

Other reasons for performance appraisal according to Akpata (2001) are to provide feedback to the supervisor and input for administrative decisions i.e. promotion, tenure, future employment etc.

According to Ubeku (1984:188) “performance appraisal is basically concerned with a review of individual performance during a set period to identify his area of strength and weakness and establish targets for him to achieve within the overall corporate objectives of the organization.

Moreover Nwachukwu (1988:165) stakes that performance appraisal is the determination of how effective an individual has performed the job for which he was hired. In many cases any one can aptly say that performance appraisal is a periodic and systematic assessment of the work, a compliment of an employee either by himself or his superior in other to impact his effectiveness and adequacy on the job.

Performance appraisal is one of the management tools designed to achieve organizational objectives contributing to the subject matter. Orugbo (1978:24-25) states that individuals in an organization have their own…..