CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT INTIATIVES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN MOYO DISTRICT LOCAL GOVERNMENT - UGANDA

Abstract

Over time, citizen’s demands for services from their Governments have increased. In order to respond to such demands, the public sector must depend on the quality of its human resources. To achieve this, massive capacity development initiatives have been initiated and implemented by Government for the entire Public Service (PS), but with no significant implication on employee performance hence poor service delivery and waste of tax payers’ money. This study therefore sought to examine the implications of capacity development initiatives on employee performance in Moyo DLG. The specific objectives of the study were; to assess the implications of performance improvement and professional development program on employee performance. The finding indicated that performance improvement and professional development programs have positive correlation with employee performance at a regression of .576 and .512 respectively. However, employee performance assessment results show that only 17.5% employees registered improvement in performance after participating in capacity development programs. There is insignificant contribution of performance improvement programs to employee performance. Only 20 employees underwent professional development program in the review period, emphasis were solely put in capacity development at the expenses of an integrated approach to employee performance encompassing ‘hard’ capacity such as work environment, tools and equipments, financial and human resources; and managerial capacities and ‘soft’ capacity including vision, goal setting, leadership, employee remuneration, motivating and supervising staff. There is serious contravention of the PS policies which recommends mandatory attendance to some programs. The study thus recommends implementation of capacity development initiatives as a total package (hybrid of all programs); transparency; strict enforcement; regular review and monitoring and evaluation; a systems approach to capacity development focusing on policies, power relations, social norms, procedures, and Individual skills, knowledge and experience. A system of auditing the outcomes of capacity development programs to provide information about the degree to which employee performance can justifiably be attributed to capacity development.