Assessment of Performance Appraisal Practice in the African Union Commission

Abstract

The study is conducted to investigate the practice of performance appraisal in the African Union Commission. It is known that performance appraisal is ongoing process of evaluating employees’ performance. In short, performance appraisal is a measurement of how well someone job-relevant tasks. These measurement are normally done by the direct supervisor of the ratee can serve different organizational purposes. The Commission used well, performance appraisal is the most powerful instrument that the Commission have to mobilize the energy of every employee of the commission toward the achievement of strategic goals. Organizational performance is the synergic sum totals of the performance all employees in the organization. To achieve the objectives of the study basic research questions were raised for the employees of the Commission. The researcher used to a study, questionnaire and interview questions. Questionnaire were distributed to a total 90 sample population out of these 15 are supervisors (appraisers) and 75 are non – supervisors (appraisees), among the total questionnaires distributed 84 (93.33%) were returned. The responses were tabulated, analyzed and interpreted in chapter three of this paper. The analysis is focused on the research problems; the objective of the study; and the aim of the analyses are going to provide interpretation of the questioner data. Accordingly, the findings have revealed that most of performance appraisal principles are not practice properly in the Commission of administration. For instances, some of the major problems are: performance appraisal goal – sets are enshrined from the employees job duty and responsibility but the administration of the commission did not give employees’ duty and responsibility during employed them for the commission; the commission has its mission, vision, and goal but it did not facilitate simply to know by the staff properly; and almost all supervisors had not a recording document, which help to record regular incident and record of good/poor behavior of the employees; the supervisors did not give feedback to employees timely about the strength and weakness of the employees and soon. Furthermore, the management or supervisors share common goals and challenges, including how to tap the potential of each employee. An effective performance appraisal system helps for organization to achieve their goals for all aspects of employer/employee relationship. Their relationship mainly focused on performance evaluation. Performance evaluation should be accurately measured so employees will know where they can improve and it helps to know where to improve should lead to training of employees to develop new skills. To conclude that if the management should follow performance appraisal practices properly, the Commission fulfills organizational goals effectively. So, the researcher suggested that administration of the Commission tried to implement the recommendation, which is mentioned in this research paper, the problems should be minimized or avoid from time to time.