ASSESSMENT OF EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL PRACTICE AND ITS LINK WITH ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE AT ETHIOPOLYMERS P.L.C

Abstract

The general objective of the study was to assess employees’ performance appraisal practice at Ethiopolymers P.L.C. The specific objectives were to find out the extent to which the organization exercises performance appraisal in terms of feedback mechanism between the supervisors and employees at all levels and how far performance gap is identified and its contribution in the employee career development. The study has also gone through the practice of reward and recognition to determine the perception of employees. A survey questionnaire was distributed to and gathered from 100 employees based on simple random sampling was used for employees and management where as purposive sampling was selected to conduct semistructured interview with HRM to support the analysis done by descriptive statistics. The instrument was designed in a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree to 5 (strongly agree) and since the culture of organization can determine the performance of employees, hypothesis test was applied to determine their correlation in which the result was positive with p-value of 0.637. The results suggest that level of feedback mechanism at top management where there is anxiety is deprived and reflected at lower levels. The company managers and functional managers have no formal discussion to review the daily performance through explicit knowledge, which is basic for self and organizational development. The appropriate plan and company objective is not reviewed and communicated to employees at lower levels; and there is no evidence based daily performance of employees. Consequently, there is impossibility of identifying the good performer from poor performer to offer the compensation benefit. The HRM practices such as career development, promotion, compensation, succession of planning and employee development are so weak to integrate with employee performance appraisal. This all aforementioned challenges could be resolved when committed and organized HRM is established to improve the overall poor practice of performance appraisal,