Performance appraisal practices in the state corporations in Kenya

Abstract

The concept of performance contracting in Kenya can be traced to 1990 when the Government approved the introduction of performance contracts in the management of State Corporations. It was not until 2003 that a new approach to performance contracting concept in line with the objectives of Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation was initiated with selected public enterprises. Subsequently the Government placed all Permanent Secretaries and chief executive officers of State Corporations on performance Contract. It is performance contracting between the government and Permanent Secretaries of State Corporations that brings about performance appraisal at individual level in an organization. Performance appraisal will enable any supervisor to ensure that performance of subordinates match the requirements of the organization. The study comprised the State Corporations that signed performance contacts with the Government of Kenya in October 200S.The study sought to determine the practices of performance appraisal in the State Corporations. The study was a descriptive research that targeted all the 16 state Corporations that signed performance contracts with the Government in October 2005. A questionnaire was sent to all Human Resource Managers of the Corporations. A response rate of 75% was achieved. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study findings indicate that majority of the respondents were female, of top management level, had graduate degree education. Over 75% of the respondents had worked for the organizations for between 4 to 16 years. The major research findings show that State Corporations use performance appraisal to improve work performance. Though it would be proper to apply all the performance appraisal practices and techniques for an appraisal of all elements of the organizations, the findings indicated that the most commonly used performance appraisal practice is Management by Objectives as opposed to the balanced scorecard, self review, peer review and upward appraisal. Although the performance appraisal practices were objective, the appraisal instruments were not tailored for every job category, performance appraisal was not necessarily used for promotion and appraisers are trained to a little extent.