Employee Development in Organizations in the Public Sector

Employee development is a program where employees are assisted by their company through various training opportunities and the use of other resources to grow their abilities and learn new information. Additionally, employee performance is an evaluation of the caliber of an employee’s work. Employee development results in a win-win situation for both the employer and the employee. Therefore, firms should invest in the education of their staff members so that they can benefit from improved overall company performance (Ocansey, 2016). The establishment of a positive reputation of employee centricity, which is concerned with its employees’ requirements for both professional and personal growth, is among the potential advantages of this program for the company. Importance of employee performance and development study to the human resource field and costs associated

Current study on employee development is a critical knowledge addition to the professional in human resource. Additionally, this study will help managers to be effective in managing human resource potential and expectations, thereby, benefiting the firm with enhanced performance. Employee performance is achieved with resource consumption. Firstly, training needs analysis will be conducted for the under-performing group as reward and compensation gifted to top achievers. Costs for the under-performing team include time for training sessions, fund resource for consultancy, and errors translated to cause bad customer service (Ocansey, 2016). High performers are paid bonuses, compensation, and rewards offered to them.

Benefits of an employee focused on self and public interest at work

Having an employee who is focused and committed to service delivery has numerous benefits. An employee is committed to their development and job responsibilities will deliver quality services achieving customer satisfaction.

Impact of employee development on productivity and efficiency in the public sector

Due to development of skills and knowledge, an employee becomes fast on discharging their duties with minimal or zero errors achieving high standards of service delivery to the public. Multitasking is also an acquired competency which will help them resolve workloads efficiently and complete tasks wholesomely and satisfactorily. Employee development will help them to be creative in inventing solutions to daily hurdles by ensuring required standards of service delivery is attained.

Role of a leader in promoting employee development

Employee development is a critical and strategic undertaking an organization can invest. This exercise makes employees effective in their duties and any other emergent commitments and challenges. The worker is equipped with better procedures for basic tasks simplifying work. Also, they gain confidence build-up, which is a motivating factor enabling them to enhance their performance. Employee development also helps the worker remain competitive or gains them a competitive edge over rivals in the same professional which gives them confidence which benefits the firm from their improved performances. As a leader, worker needs to develop the capacity to tactfully and strategically deal with daily issues within the culture, goals, and objectives of the organization. An employee will be trained on best practices and aligning their everyday actions and decisions to the company’s values and esteemed virtues. Training an employee on fast-thinking and execution is also critical ensuring operations are consistently normalized even in the face of challenges (Rajeswari & Palanichamy, 2012). It is vital that the worker also is familiarized and tuned to supporting the firm’s business strategy. Essentially, understanding the concept of operation of the company will align the employee’s decisions and actions consistently.

Strategic coaching sessions can be organized for employees within the central premises where resources will be facilitated. Network branches- employees can be reached via emails regarding the training, video-conferencing or Skype linkage to equally benefit them with the training. The coaching needs to focus on critical matters on the core of the company’s operations and culture to have a team with needed competencies on culture and performance. Different employees have different training gaps apart from the general must-have trainings like an adopted company culture or environmental factor training (West & Blackman, 2015). For the training with a common interest among the employees, schedules can be arranged conveniently to all members to have the lessons rolled out periodically until its completion. An exceptional case involves employees seeking certain competencies and capabilities critical to their roles. Segregative training sessions will be arranged with each one of them to impact the needed skills and knowledge.

Performance Appraisal and Impact on Employee Development

Performance appraisal

Performance appraisal is a tool utilized to evaluate the performance of employees against set performance indicators. This tool guides an employee to make efforts to realize the expected performance levels and gives feedback on outstanding performances (West & Blackman, 2015). Performance appraisals need to reflect company’s values and culture. Key performance indicators are set out in collaboration between the managers and their juniors and employees evaluated against them annually or twice in a year if convenient. The result of this exercise is a motivation to the participants. The firm will invest resources post the exercise to compensate the achievers with gifts, monetary rewards like cash bonuses and promotions. On the other side, the poor performers get warning letters and are booked for training sessions on their performance gaps.

Performance appraisals Methods

An organization can have a discussion with its employees on what needs to be their key performance indicators. Additionally, the desirable company’s culture will be set out in the document to be compared with the employee’s actual character and competencies ( Goswami, 2013). The manager will also set the expected levels of performance in each indicator. Example of performance indicator in a departmental setting is the budgetary allocation and utilization. The departmental heads will be evaluated based on their spending and cost-efficiency. Deficits in the budget will be noted as poor performance; the appraisal in a warehouse setting would involve appraising the efficiency of the receiving team. The performance indicators being on-time in full receiving with zero errors on products. Damaged and wrong products received will signify poor performance.

Impact of performance appraisal on employee development

Performance appraisal reveals the gaps in the employee performance and directs for actions. Therefore, the employee is well aware of areas to work on to develop their performance. Also, employees are motivated to achieve more when they get positive feedback from performance appraisal ( Goswami, 2013). They feel energized and, therefore, put efforts to maintain consistency in performance or exceed expectation. Ideally, performance appraisal needs to yield rewards or punishment at the end of the exercise. Positive feedback from the exercise will achieve the employee rewards that could be monetary bonuses, material gifts or promotion. An employee rewarded with the promotion will have developed their career to a higher position. Additionally, the promoted worker can be subjected to further training on leadership and strategic skills for them to effectively discharge their duties in their new positions.

Moreover, performance appraisal can result in punishment to employees, whereby, it is informed as a warning letters to poor performers and denied bonuses and promotions. Still, employees will be motivated to elevate their performance due to the fear of losing their jobs because of being unproductive (Rajeswari & Palanichamy, 2012). They will put efforts and create a free time to learn essential skills disadvantaging them from the rest; example, learning system application, excel application usage.

Leadership styles that stimulate employee performance and development

Laissez-faire management style. The approach is the hands-off management, whereby, the leaders delegate responsibilities to their juniors with little or no directions. The only interest of the leadership of an organization is for the team to meet the business needs of the firm. The leadership style motivates employees when they are given the responsibilities to perform in place of management.

Consultative democratic. Through the system, the managers allow the employees to make the ideas but the ideas are forwarded to the executive’s, or the manager consults their team to make the final decision. Thus, the employees feel a part of the leadership taking part in solving company’s issues.

Tools to Motivate Public Sector Employees for Better Performance

Increased engagement. The employers often neglect public sector employees for various reasons occasioned by budgetary constraints. Because of public debts and capital expenditures on various projects, the government usually allocates minimal funds for the well-fare of their employees. Therefore, employees only need constant engagement and reassurance of job security which motivates them.

Better working conditions. The employees in the public sector will be motivated, when provided with a favorable working environment safe for their health. Safety forms a crucial factor in motivation, and it is the best employers in this sector can offer in the absence of monetary compensation.

Personal growth. Employers should collaborate with the banking sector to help employees in the public area to acquire financial aids in the form of loans to amounts required. The loans help the employees in personal development which motivates them on their jobs.

Conclusion

Employees form the most vital resource an organization has. Their input is dependent upon the management treatment is determining the success an organization. Therefore, efforts and resources need to be channeled to achieve employee motivation and morale through their development and performance management. This paper notes that employee development serves to benefit both an employee and a company. The exercise consumes resources to add knowledge and skill capacity to the worker whose performance will contribute to the success of the firm. Leaders have a critical role to develop their employees which involves organizing for training needs analysis and sessions to close performance gaps of individual workers. He needs to focus on skills ad competency training which is strategic to the firm’s operations and also aligned with the company’s culture and values. The manager is also responsible for coming up with performance appraisal evaluating the employee’s performance against agreed key performance indicators. This exercise needs to be conducted annually and tied to rewards and punishment. Performance appraisal yields positive results for employee development, which includes motivation to achieve more, career growth through promotion and scheduled coaching to resolve performance gaps for poor performers. Finally, the article discusses Laissez-faire and consultative democracy leaderships, which enhances employee development through motivation due to employee engagement and highlights tools motivating the public sector workers to perform better.

References

Goswami, B.B. (2013). Performance appraisal-management by objective and assessment centre–modern approaches to performance appraisal. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 7(5), pp. 24-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.9790/487x-0752428

Ocansey, F. (2016). Training the employee for improved performance: the mediating role of employee performance appraisal. Texila International Journal of Management, 2(2), pp. 111-118. http://dx.doi.org/10.21522/tijmg.2015.02.02.art009

Rajeswari, T., & Palanichamy, D. (2012). Impact of training and development on employee performance in select public sector organizations. International Journal Of Scientific Research, 3(4), pp. 1-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.15373/22778179/apr2014/227

West, D., & Blackman, D. (2015). Performance management in the public sector. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 74(1), pp. 73-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12130