THE ASSESSMENT OF EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: THE CASE STUDY OF ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY

Abstract

Performance Management System is one of the major systems that an organization should consider in its human resource management practice. Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has practiced performance management system that aims to the objective of achieving its mandate. The mission and strategic goals of ATA cascades to the human resource it hires and evaluate the performance of its employees by competency based performance evaluation process. ATA has implemented competency based performance evaluation process in the past four years of its operations but has observed challenges mainly on ensuring validity and reliability of the individual employee performance review process on individual employee performance evaluation cases. This study, therefore, assess the objectivity and validity of ATA performance management practice. The study applied stratified random sampling technique in which 128 staff that have involved in at least two performance appraisal processes in ATA were distributed the data collection questionnaire. The collected data from the respondent staff is analyzed and the study findings showed that the ATA performance management process lacks fair performance measurement procedure used to determine the ratings as well as procedures to link the ratings with rewards. This resulted dissatisfaction of employees and reduced employee’s self-esteem that led to the decline of employees’ intention and commitment to stay in the organization longer. The performance management process also has problems to be inclusive and open at all times by fairly resolving unjustified decisions on employee’s performance appraisal result and feedback. Based on the analysis of the findings of this study therefore methods of closing the gaps identified to the attitudinal and cultural contexts are recommended. In addition, the study recommends that employees should be convinced they are involved in the decisions made on their performance evaluation results and supervisors shall ensure this is achieved by providing regular and timely feedback to their employees.