Abstract:
Managers of public, private, civil or non-governmental organisationscannot ignore the importance of developing their human resource to acquire the essential skills, knowledge and desired attitudes needed for timely deliveryof appropriate actions to achieve corporate goals. It is no doubt that the effective tool to measure or evaluate performance of individuals, teams and organisations is the Performance Appraisal technique. The question, however,is how relevant and effective is this tool being used.
This study, therefore, critically examines the relevance, effectiveness, and the procedures of the performance appraisal system in Quality Control Division (QCD) of COCOBOD in order to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and make suggestions for best practice.
The findings show that the performance appraisal system in QCD is fraught with imperfections rendering it almost ineffective. Apart from promotion and pay-raise, data generated through the system is usually not used for any other administrative and human resource development decisions.Targets are set anyhow and are not communicated to staff, performance appraisal criteria are unclear, resulting in subjective measurements, and there is lack of effective monitoring and feedback or appraisal interviews.
If QeD is to develop and grow to gain competitive advantage over her competitors and would-be competitors, then management has the responsibility to be committed to the system, organise systematic training of all appraisers, set targets and identify key results areas of all jobs within the organisation, and observe the best practices of performance appraisal in order to meet the growing millennium challenges of the 21st Century.
