CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Problem

There are different ways of defining the term training. It may be defined as a systematic development of the knowledge, skills and behavior required by employees to do adequately on confirmed task or job (Shaheen, Naqvi& Khan, 2013) or simply learning that is provided in order to improve performance on the present job (Amin et al., 2013). On the other hand Elnaga and Imra (2013) define employee training as programs that provide workers with information, new skills, or professional development opportunities. It can take place in numerous ways, on the job or off the job; in the organization or outside organization. Regardless of the view, the term training draws elements of acquiring new knowledge to help manage both current and future situations.

Motivation is very important from an organizational point of view because it transforms human resources into action (Saeed&Asghar, 2012). They continue to say that this improves the efficiency level of the employees and it leads to achieving organizational goals. In this way motivation is an internal feeling that comes from inside i.e. when employees are motivated towards their jobs, they are motivated to do more work. For this reason, it is necessary to provide such a workplace to the employees so that they feel motivated and perform better and better. Therefore motivation may be viewed as those psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed (Kreitner&Kinicki, 2006). Asim (2013) summarizes that employees in any sector are the real assets of the organization and if they are motivated they perform their duties with full honor and dedication, they become fully loyal with it and are hence considered as a human capital of the organization.

In Cameroon (2020) linked employee training and development activities to the National School of Local Administration. He posits that training and development activities have been used by the NASLA to ensure that it had well-grounded staff to support the growth agenda  and  as  a  result,  many  of  her  employees  got  opportunities  to  take  on higher responsibilities as well as being able to in achieving the best in all areas of their professional and personal lives. This was supported by a study by Otuko, Chege and Douglas (2013) looking at the effect of training dimensions on employee’s work performance with a focus on National School of Local Administration. The study indicated that there was a positive and significant effect between training needs assessment; training contents and employee performance in National School of Local Administration

The general assembly of the United Nations [UN] also acknowledges the need for a competent, engaged and motivated staff. For example, the introduction to the UN Handbook on Competencies (2009) posit that in ‘Building the Future’, the organization’s greatest strength—and the key to success—is the quality of staff and managers. Hence to capitalize on this strength, the organizations need to create an organizational culture achievable through employee training and environment that enables staff to contribute to their maximum potential. This has seen a creation of training programs to stimulate increased employee productivity and performance (UN, 2010).

According to Leonard-Barton, (1992), an organization that gives worth to knowledge as a source of gaining competitive edge than competitors, should build up system that ensure constant learning, and on the effective way of doing so is training. Pfeffer (1994) highlights that well-trained workforce is more capable of achieving performance targets and gaining competitive advantage in the market. Training is determined as the process of enabling employee to complete the task with greater efficiency, thus considered to be vital element of managing the human resource performance strategically (Lawler, 1993; Delaney and Huselid, 1996). The importance of training on the employee performance, through accelerating the learning process, is mentioned in many researches (e.g. McGill and Slocum, 1993; Ulrichet al., 1993; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; DiBella et al., 1996).

Employee performance, achieved through training, refers to immediate improvements in the knowledge, skills and abilities to carry out job related work, and hence achieve more employee commitment towards the organizational goals (Huselid, 1995; Ichniowski et al., 1997). Kamoche and Mueller (1998) mentioned that training should leads to the culture of enhancing learning, to raise employee performance and ultimately higher return on investment (in training) for the firm. “ A term typical to the Human Resource field, employee performance is everything about the performance of employees in a firm or a company or an organization. It involves all aspects which directly or indirectly affect and relate to the work of the employees” (employee performance. website ). Employee’s performance is important for the company to make every effort to help low performers.

Performance is classified into five elements: Planning, monitoring, developing, rating and rewarding. In the planning stage, Planning means setting goals, developing strategies, and outlining tasks and schedules to accomplish the goals. Monitoring is the phase in which the goals are looked at to see how well one is doing to meet them .Monitoring means continuously measuring performance and providing ongoing feedback to employees and work groups on their progress toward reaching their goals. The relationship between Training and employees performance Most of the previous studies provides the evidence that there is a strong positive relationship between human resource management practices and organizational performance. (Purcell et al., 2003).

According to Guest (1997) mentioned in his study that training and development programs , as one of the vital human resource management practice, positively affects the quality of the workers knowledge, skills and capability and thus results in higher employee performance on job. This relation ultimately contributes to supreme organizational performance. The result of Farooq.M,&Aslam. M. K (2011) study depicts the positive correlation between training and employee performance as r=.233. Thus, we can predict from this finding that it is not possible for the firm to gain higher returns without best utilization of its human resource, and it can only happen when firm is able to meet its employee’s job related needs in timely fashion.

As depicted by the work of Harrison (2000), learning through training influence the organizational performance by greater employee performance, and is said to be a key factor in the achievement of corporate goals. However, implementing training programs as a solution to covering performance issues such as filling the gap between the standard and the actual performance is an effective way of improving employee performance (Swart et al., 2005).

According to Swart et al., (2005), bridging the performance gap refers to implementing a relevant training intervention for the sake of developing particular skills and abilities of the workers and enhancing employee performance. He further elaborate the concept by stating that training facilitate organization to recognize that its workers are not performing well and a thus their knowledge, skills and attitudes needs to be moulded according to the firm needs. There might be various reasons for poor performance of the employees such as workers may not feel motivated anymore to use their competencies, or may be not confident enough on their capabilities, or they may be facing work- life conflict.

All the above aspects must be considered by the firm while selecting most appropriate training intervention that helps organization to solve all problems and enhance employee motivational level to participate and meet firm expectations by showing desired performance. As mentioned by Swart et al.(2005) this employee superior performance occur only because of good quality training program that leads to employee motivation and their needs fulfillment.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The recognition of the importance of training in recent years has been heavily influenced by the intensification of competition and the relative success of organizations where investment in employee development is considerably emphasized (Sultana, Irum, Ahmed and Mehmood, 2012). Training is necessary to ensure an adequate supply of staff that is technically and socially competent and capable of career development into specialist departments or management positions. There is therefore a continual need for the process of staff development, and training fulfils an important part of this process (Sultana et al. 2012).

Despite the strong assumptions that workplace training influences employee outcomes (e.g. motivation, commitment, withdrawal behavior and work performance), there is a limited number of studies in field settings addressing these issues empirically (Dysvik and Kuvaas, 2008). These sentiments are supported by Burgard and Görlitz (2011) who argued that non-monetary returns to training are less often examined in the empirical literature.

Similarly Agyemang and Ofei (2013) argue that despite employee engagement and employee commitment and their determinants received a great deal of attention in the last decade in academic circles, the concepts remain new with relatively little academic research conducted on them especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Furthermore most studies on the subject of training and how it impacts on employee and organizational performance are majorly confined to the developed world within the context of individual countries and organizations raising the question on whether their findings can be generalized to other sectors, countries and the developing world.

More explicitly, Dysvik and Kuvaas (2008) based their study which explored alternative relationships between training opportunities and employee outcomes in the Norwegian service organizations. The study showed that the relationship between perceived training opportunities and both task performance and citizenship behaviors were fully mediated and that the relationship between perceived training opportunities and turnover intention was partially mediated by employee intrinsic motivation.

Sahinidis and Bouris (2007) based their study which aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived employee training effectiveness and job satisfaction, motivation and commitment on employees and lower managers, on five large Greek organizations. The study indicated that indicating that there is a significant correlation between the employee perceived training effectiveness and their commitment, job satisfaction and motivation and high correlations were found between the latter three variables.

Further President Paul Biya and His wife Madam Chantal Biya (2020) focused on visualizing the importance of training for school teachers at the district of National School and Local Administration, and in analyzing its relationship between training and teachers’ performance. They found out a significant and positive association between training and organization performance.

In Cameroon, most scholars have focused primarily on established commercial institutions as case studies in an attempt to highlight the relationship between staff training and employee performance.

In all these studies reviewed, the estimation framework does not allow taking time variant and unobserved factors into account. Though their findings might matter in a crucial way since the findings may apply in some situations, it is not clear whether these results would uniformly persist for other countries and sectors as well all classes of employees which present a knowledge gap. Hence the motivation to explore the relationship between employee training and performance in the United Nation Support Office for the African Union Mission in Somalia (NASLA) for the African Union Mission in Somalia (in the current study.

1.3 Research Questions

The study is guided by the following research questions

1. What is the role of training on employee engagement?
2. What is the role of training on employee motivation?
3. What is the role of training on employee job satisfaction?

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