AN INVESTIGATION OF FACTORS AFFECTING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE (A case study among public service employee in Kenya districts)

AN INVESTIGATION OF FACTORS AFFECTING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

(A case study among public service employee in Kenya districts)

 

      According to studies conducted last January of 2005 by Doctor Technologiae: Human Resource Department the Public Service of Kenya can be trace in its roots by the British colonial administration. The mindset of the people is still in poverty and unemployment so public service personnel have taken advantage of their position as a means to uplift their lives.  And during the independence where there were no major changes in the structure of the services. And so the continues years remain to render poor quality service in lieu with the poor performance of the Kenyan employees. According to the Directorate of Personnel Management (DP).

      Over the years the government has yet been able to offer a good competitive salary and wages to its employee especially in public sector, therefore the benefits recurred by public employee do not necessarily satisfy the basic needs of their family. And so it is quite obvious why the public service employee leads to a poor performance that has always been the problem in most agencies.  To address the problem in uplifting public performance the government introduced reformed programs this aims to improve work performance and quality service delivery to promote welfare to people.  The poor work performance has led to the decline in the growth of economy from an average of Gross Domestic Product rate of 2.3% to 1.1% in 2003. Source: World Bank. The low morale of the Police force was obvious during this time security measures have been very low which results high crime rates in the country. That is the reason why foreign investors resist putting up business in this and some even moved up to safer country for a long period of time.

      Among the many problems that arise are stealing, corruption, laziness, absenteeism low-morale, non-motivated employees and high public complains etc.

      The first undertaking by the government was to reduce the staff that does not perform well a voluntary early retirement program took place so they can replace them. They also replace employee who never report regularly to perform their daily duty. Those who were reported to have a corrupt practice are also discharge from the service. About 4500 ghost employees included in the payroll are also been removed and some charged and penalized.  Strict enforcement of the law has also been undertaken.  This results in decline of employee 272,000 in 1991 to 193,000 in 2002 (Ministry of

Planning and National Development (MPND).  And so they only hired highly competent individual who can perform.  When the chosen staff has been put into place the second phase of the program is to monitor their productivity at workflow government see to it that delivery of service is being rendered to the public with utmost attention and quality.  

      The third phase of the program aims to enhance the productivity and performance of the public personnel by giving them proper guidance and training. This also aims to eliminate some forms of corruption which is highly practiced by some abusive individuals during their present times that resulted in improper distribution of resources and unreported allocation and purchases of merchandise used by government public offices, Misappropriation of funds and poor delivery of services.

      However the salary and wages and the benefits of public servants only has slightly increased and expected changes has yet been determined in this case motivation for the employees welfare is highly enforce. They are still waiting for the fulfillment of the government promise of reforms in salary increase.  

      As of the present times government have yet motivated public service official and employee to perform their job in the service of the people and not just for personal gain. The Kenyans have somehow uplifted a bit of their morale in public service and the program undertakings have been effectively imposed. The people of today somehow enjoy the service of the government compare to the recent years. But the low morale in International relationship still believes that their country is still far from total standard in public service. The government still needs to perform an additional task in continuing their program to find its way to the development of their country.

     

     

     

     

 

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