A study of the perception of senior staff on the training and development programmes of University of Cape Coast

Abstract

Training and development of staff is one sure way to deal with the recent challenges such as increasing enrollment and use of technology facing Ghanaian universities. Unfortunately, in spite of the cost involved, training programmes do not always result in improved performances. The study therefore aimed at finding out the perception of senior staff on the training and development programmes provided by the University of Cape Coast and whether they actually result in improved performances. The study adopted the case study design. Data were collected through questionnaire, interviews and study of relevant documents. From a population of 240 senior staff who had undergone training and development programmes, stratified random sampling procedure was used to select a sample size of 151. Also, five Heads of Department and one key staff from the Training and Development Section of the University were purposively selected to respond to interviews. Software Package for Service Solution (SPSS) was used to analyse data using means and frequencies. ANOVA was used to determine the level of differences in the responses and a post hoc test was conducted to determine where these differences occur. The study revealed that senior staff generally perceived that the training and development programmes had a positive influence on their performance. However, the programmes were more favourable to the other categories of staff like Research Assistants and Health Staff compared to the Administrative staff. Also, while senior staff perceived long term academic oriented programmes to have more influence on their performance, management thinks otherwise. Based on these findings, the study recommends that the training process for administrative staff should be reconsidered, and also that training should be made the responsibility of the departments with the Training and Development Section playing the role of coordination.