Employee engagement is trending as major concern among business globally as business look for innovative ways to be sustainable and remain competitive. Identifying and investigating the various work contexts that influence employee commitment and retention is a priority that directly impacts business bottom line. In the context of employee engagement, the exploratory research study investigates the barriers to employee engagement and in what way performance management systems can be leveraged to motivate enhance employee engagement. The study was conducted in Gauteng with senior management and Human Resource experts from the largest four banks in South Africa. Data for the study was gathered through eighteen semi-structured interviews conducted by the researcher and all interviews were recorded on audio disc. The subjects of the study were selected using a non-probability purposive sampling technique. The results suggest that business acknowledge employee engagement as a key component of business strategy and performance management systems is a critical organisational process, which may be used tap into the discretionary efforts of employees. The results reveal that the barriers to performance management are shared with employee engagement, and when these are conquered, employee engagement improves. The results recommend that to improve employee engagement the right leaders must be selected and trained and the environment must be one of trust, accountability and transparency. The results reveal that leaders must set out clear expectations to drive performance management and employee engagement to actively influence employees to participate and engage. / Dissertation(MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

Employee engagement and training & development, as a human resources management practice, has been extensively studied across the world. These studies tested employee engagement and training & developments’ effect on various measures of performance. The bulk of these studies were conducted in North America over the past three decades with more studies emanating from other parts of the world for the better part of the past decade. Studies largely found a positive correlation between these two variables and the specific measure of performance being tracked. This research seeks to determine whether the effect on perceived performance would be similar when testing employee engagement and training & development within the South African context. A quantitative approach was adopted and proved that both training & development and employee engagement has a positive result on perceived performance. The relationship between training & development and employee engagement was ambivalent. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / Unrestricted

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Thesis (MPH.) -- University of Limpopo, 2016. / The South African government has introduced PMDS as a tool to monitor and manage the performances of departments, institutions, teams and individuals in order to improve service delivery, and to counteract the legacy of poor performance. In order for the government to achieve this goal, PMDS implementers must be equipped with adequate knowledge and skills which will enable them to implement the system correctly, in compliance with the standards and procedures laid down in the government PMDS policy. The aim of the study was to determine the knowledge and practices of PMDS of supervisors who are tasked with the responsibility to supervise their subordinates. Methods A cross sectional descriptive quantitative study was carried out in the Greater Tzaneen Primary Health Care facilities. A total of 117 participants comprising of professional nurses, operational managers and assistant managers completed the questionnaires. These comprised largely of close-ended questions and some open- ended questions. Analysis of data was done using statistical software, SPSS 22.0 version and results were interpreted. Results Generally all the respondents had average (65.8%) understanding of the PMDS processes including the purpose and their roles as supervisors. However, a gap exists between the theoretical knowledge and the actual ability to practise PMDS which was found to be around 52%. There are areas of weakness that still need attention: unavailability of PMDS guidelines, lack of training of both supervisors and employees. Lastly, the nature of challenges which the respondents reported regarding PMDS implementation signifies that there might be underlying problems with PMDS which were not covered by this study, and these challenges, by far outweigh their confident knowledge and ability to practise PMDS. v Conclusion To improve the knowledge and ability to supervise PMDS, the following recommendations were brought forth: proper induction of all PMDS supervisors and periodic in-service training, PMDS policy manuals as a source of reference to be made available in the facility and all supervisors to be orientated how to use them.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management (in the field of Public and Development Management) 31 March 2014 / Non Profit Organisations (NPOs) are not exempt from the demands of employee attraction, retention and motivation. As NPOs seek to sustain themselves, the need to manage the performance of employees will continue to be a critical human resource management issue. Performance Appraisals (PAs) are used as tools that help manage the performance of employees; however, there is little understanding by those who participate in their use in NPOs. The purpose of this research is to explore how PAs are used at the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD) and how the employees perceive their use. Using qualitative research methods, primary data was collected through interviews and document analysis. The main findings of the research were that, the CEPD was unclear about its objectives for conducting PAs due to poor implementation of performance management systems and that, employees’ perceive the performance appraisal process as ineffective and irrelevant. There are serious managerial implications for defining the process of conducting appraisals and these include; training, selection of appropriate tools and clarifying the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder in the process.

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No description available.

This study investigated the relationship between management style and the personality variable "locus of control" on subordinate job satisfaction among employees of a Communications Center for a large municipal law enforcement agency. Unlike many of the past studies that investigated the relationship between employee internality and job satisfaction, this current study found that Internals and Externals did not differ in general satisfaction when both had perceptions of high considerate supervisory behavior. It was also hypothesized that locus of control would have a high negative correlation with general satisfaction. This hypothesis was not supported. The last hypothesis of this study involved the degree to which Internal and External subordinates would differ from one another when they perceived their supervisor to be high or low on both supervisory dimensions (considerations and initiating structure). A t-test for independent samples showed that the difference (on satisfaction) between those individuals with an Internal locus of control and those with and External locus of control was not significantly different when they perceived their supervisor to be high on both the consideration and initiating structure dimensions.

Recent work in performance appraisal has focused on the cognitive operations involved in a rating task, but has neglected the influence of affect. The purpose of the present study was to examine the process by which affect influences evaluations and to examine the impact of affeet on outcome variables. A categorization-based model of the rating process was developed that included the influence of affect. According to the model, affect was postulated to influence the categorization process at the superordinate level. The model also postulated that the classification would then influence the processing of subsequent information. To test predictions derived from the model, the present study simulated a work situation. Subjects were required to learn materials, train confederates, and then observe and evaluate confederate's videotaped performance. The impact of affect and item type was examined on process measures and the impact of affect and performance was examined on outcome measures. The results showed that affect biased leader evaluations in the form of leniency and severity. Signal detection analysis indicated that response bias may have been the cognitive mechanism underlying this effect. Leaders attributed non-performed behaviors to confederates in a category consistent manner. Path analysis showed that affect has direct and indirect effects on performance evaluations. The theoretical and applied considerations of the study's findings are discussed and future research directions are highlighted. / Ph. D.