The purpose of this research is to conduct an evaluation of the return on investment value of Employee Assistance Programmes within the South African context. Assistance to employees originated from the 19th century. The term Employee Assistance Programmes was however formulated in the 1970’s in the United States. The Employee Assistance field has since seen a paradigm shift in its focus, significant growth in its market value (amount of corporate clients internationally investing in EAPs for their employees), the establishment of a regulatory and ethical body through EAPA and its formalization as an academic discipline. This study takes the concept of return on investment value of EAPs further than the ratio of benefit-to-cost. The utilization of different data sources, inclusive of quantitative and qualitative instruments creates an opportunity to explore areas of value perception of different role players in the field. It furthermore maps the subjective and objective experience of behaviour change resulting from personal problems and the journey of change as a result of focused interventions. The consistency of views across different datasources as well as between different industries strengthens the value add claims of EAPs as contributing to the financial bottom line of companies. This study advocates for the importance of programme evaluation as a central part of EAP contracting. It furthermore also highlights the importance of documentation of employee performance for evaluation purposes. It illustrates a journey that can be complicated by the failure to agree to evaluative terms at program inception as well as unstructured data-capturing within companies. Employee behaviour consists of both computable and incomputable elements. Generally the focus of a return on investment study would be the computable components of human behaviour. This investigation however highlights significant elements of risk relating to employee performance challenges that is not easy to include in a ROI but holds significant financial and reputational risks for corporate clients. The influence of individual performance challenges on teams and the challenges it holds for line managers is also highlighted through the qualitative journey of this study. Employee behaviour seems vulnerable to internal and external forces and as a result companies’ productivity can be affected by how individual employees respond to these forces. It could be accepted that interventions that is aimed at stabilising and improving employee behaviour, will inevitably impact work performance and as a result the financial bottom-line of the company. Employee Assistance Programmes often operates in an arena where other programmes aimed at impacting employee behaviour are also present. It is thus difficult to isolate it’s intervention as being one of the main behaviour changing facilitators of the company. This study acknowledges this challenge and changes focus to different data-sources reporting on employee behaviour before and after EAP intervention. The consistency of data across these different data-sources becomes one of the main reporting areas for this study. Eventually the challenges encountered in this study guides the advocacy in the recommendations for a thorough agreement of programme evaluation at inception, the areas that will be included in such evaluations, the availability of Human Resource data to ensure effective evaluation inclusive of ROI assessments, targeted assessments at service provider level with effective software support. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

There are different views on the nature and content of strategies that ensure positive performance in the economic crisis environment. This has created the need for studies focusing on the relationship between strategies and performance in different economic crises. Manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe have experienced declining performance since 1996. It is against this background that this study examined the dimension of strategic orientations (as measures of strategies) exercised by firms to determine their relationship with performance during the economic crisis. Data on the various dimensions of strategic orientation was collected through questionnaires, while data on performance were collected through questionnaires and financial statements. The study sample was obtained through a stratified sampling technique which falls within the sphere of probability sampling methods. The multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between the six dimensions of strategic orientation and performance. The analysis dimension of strategic orientation was dominantly exercised by many firms. The analysis dimension of strategic orientation was also the most effective because it had a positive relationship with performance (positive profitability and growth). This makes the analysis dimension of strategic orientation relevant in economic crisis. The study showed that the pro-activeness dimension of strategic orientation focused by very few firms had a positive relationship with performance (positive profitability and growth) and hence making it relevant in economic crisis. Moreover, it was established that the relationship between aggressiveness and riskiness dimensions of strategic orientation was negative and hence less relevant in economic crisis. It is therefore recommended that, for manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe to survive, improve performance and ensure sustainability in the current economic crisis environment, they need to focus dominantly on the analysis and pro-activeness dimensions of strategic orientation. This requires firms to invest more in research and development, develop strategic partnerships with other firms, strong networks, innovative and creative capabilities. In addition, firms must avoid fighting competitors and taking risky decisions. This study considered firms that are currently operational and it is recommended that future studies consider firms that closed during the economic crisis to acquire a deeper understanding of the effective strategies in economic crisis. / Business Management / D.B.L.