Abstract

The study focused on the effect of human resource training and development on employee’s performance of health facilities in the Buea Health District. The overall objective of the study is to determine the effect of human resource training and development on employees’ performance. Specifically, the study sought to determined how mentoring, job rotation, job delegation and employees empowerment effect employees performance.

The study adopted a cross-sectional study design to sample 206 respondents from the various health facilities in Buea Municipality using purposive sampling techniques. Data was collected using structured-questionnaire and was analyzed using SPSS (23.0). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the data analysis. The descriptive statistics such as frequency, percent, mean and standard deviation were used for describing the demographic characteristics of respondents and the dependent and independent variables.

The inferential statistics like Pearson correlation coefficient(r) and simple linear regression were used to determine if there is relationship existed between independent and dependent variables. The findings indicated that human resource training and development were positively correlated statistically significant relationship with employees’ performance.

The study revealed that mentoring has a significant relationship with employee’s performance, job rotation has an effect on employees performance, job delegation has a significant relationship with employees performance and employees empowerment has a significant relationship with employees performance.

The study concluded that human resource training and development have positive effect on employees’ performance in health facilities in the Buea Health District. It is recommended that certain areas be improved, that is, management support, the provision of feedback to employees and the conducting of employee training on a continuous basis.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Employees are the most precious asset for any company as they can build up or destroy the company and they can affect profitability (Elnaga & Imran, 2013). Human resources are the most valuable assets of any organisation, with the machines, materials and even the money, nothing gets done without human resource training and development. Thus, training is a systematic development of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by employees to perform adequately on a given task or job. Elnaga and Imran (2013) further argue that to prepare their employees to do their jobs as desired, organisations provide training to optimise their employees’ potential

Similarly, Ezeani and Oladele, (2013) stated that staff training and development is a work activity that can make a very significant contribution to the overall effectiveness and profitability of an organisation. Therefore, training can take place in several ways; either within the organisation or outside the organisation. However, a systematic approach should be utilised in the training delivery process of any organisation to improve or develop job-related performances such as knowledge, skills and attitudes of the employees. As a result, the level of productivity and efficiency of employees could be enhanced to attain the maximum output through systematic training and development (Tannehill, 2010).

Training and Development exists to promote individual and organisational excellence by providing opportunities to develop workplace skills. The design and implementation of effective training interventions cannot be accomplished without identifying the various processes operating within the system (Laird, 2003). Thus, training is the fundamental area of human resources, which is referred to as a course of diet and exercise for developing the employees’ affective, cognitive and psychomotor skills that assist the organizations to have a crucial method of developing the employee towards enhancing his productivity (Ezeani & Oladele, 2013).

Effective training is beneficial for the firm in a variety of ways, such as, it plays a vital role in building and maintaining capabilities, both on individual and organisational levels, and thus participates in the process of organizational change (Valle et al., 2000). Moreover, it enhances the retention capacity of a talented workforce, hence decreasing the unintentional job rotation of the workers (Ugwu & Igbo, 2021).

The concept of training can be traced back in history when the output of many companies was not significant, despite the availability of raw materials to be used. In the 1910s, some corporations (General Electric, Westinghouse, and International Harvester) came up with factory schools to train their employees to develop their technical skills as they realized the importance of training and development events although few researchers disagree about the importance of training and development on the success of an organization because it involves a huge cost that may affect prioritization. After the 2nd world War, the organisation came to realise that without training they could not succeed, and this made them start emphasising training.

The main objective of every organisation is to improve its performance but this can never be possible without the efficient performance of employees. Therefore, the performance management system came into effect as a management reform to address and redress concerns organisations had about their performance (Sharif, 2002). In organsations, a wide range of reforms that focus on performance have also been implemented (Downs, Chadbourn, & Hogan, 2000; Gleeson & Husbands, 2001).

Human resource training and development is one of the most important organisational dynamics. It constitutes the pivot in which organisational survival is run. A well-trained employee at all levels is vital to an organisation for its continuous success progress and survival so that it can meet the challenges of business and technological changes. Training is an effort initiated by an organisation to foster learning among its workers, and development is an effort that is oriented more towards broadening an individual’s skills for future responsibility (George & Scott, 2012). Training and development are a continuous effort designed to improve employees‟ competence and organize performance as a goal to improve employees‟ capacity and performance. Human Resource Management has played a significant role in the economic development of most developed countries like Britain America and Japan (George & Scott, 2012).

In a developing country like Cameroon, with its rich natural resources and financial support, one can also experience such economic success if the appropriate attention is given to the development and training of human resources. Every aspect and activity in an organisation involves people. For instance, a manager will not be successful if he has subordinates who are not well-equipped with skills, knowledge, ability, and competence (Imran & Tanveer, 2015).

To run an organisation, be it big or small, requires staffing the organisation with efficient personnel. Specific job skills, ability, knowledge and competence needed in the workplace are not efficiently taught in formal education. As such, most employees need extensive training to ensure the necessary skills, knowledge, ability, and competence to bring out substantive contributions towards the company‟’s growth. For employees to be flexible and effective in their jobs, they need to acquire and develop knowledge and skills, and for them to believe that they are valued by the organisation they work for, they need to see valuable signs of management commitment to their training needs (Tahir et al., 2014).

Each new employee must be properly trained not only to develop technical skills but to make them an integral part of the organisation. Training and development is an aspect that must be faced by every organisation, and its major aim is to improve the employees‟ competencies such that the organisation can maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of their human resources. It can be an advantage for an organisation if they win the “hearts and minds” of their workers, getting them to identify with the organisation (Armstrong, 2009). For workers to perform well, there must be an investment in the training processes. These processes are part of the entire human resource management approach which results in employees being motivated to perform (Imran & Tanveer, 2015).

However, training varies from organisation to organisation regarding the quality and quantity of training factors, which may include: the degree of external environment change, the degree of change in the internal environment, current suitable skills in the existing workforce and the level to which the management see training as a motivating factor in the workplace (Cole, 2002). Several companies address their needs for training in an impromptu and indiscriminate way; training in such companies is pretty much impromptu and unsystematic. Different companies however begin distinguishing their training needs, then outline and execute training exercises in a normal way, and lastly evaluate after effects of the training (Falola et al., 2014).

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The health service sector recently faces problems which in turn have resulted to a reduction in the number of employees, which shows that highly skilled hospital employees are immediately required to meet current demands. Employees in these medical facilities are often challenged with issues such as high-stress work environment and risk of burnout, dealing with patient emotions, concerns, and sometimes aggressive behavior and Balancing workload and managing time efficiently.

Despite the known benefits of human resource training and development for employee performance, many hospitals in Cameroon still do not invest adequately in training and development programs. This lack of investment has led to several problems, such as reduced employee productivity and efficiency, increased errors and mistakes, brings about poor patient care, low employee morale and engagement, high employee turnover and lastly results to difficulty attracting and retaining top talents.

Employee performance in most hospitals in Buea has been on a decline over the past years as a result of a lack of the necessary budget and resources needed to train and develop their employees. They also lack time and capacity and face difficulty identifying the right training needs and also lack the appropriate means to evaluate the effectiveness of the available training programs.

In recent years, the need for mentoring programs to increase the performance and productivity of employees by decreasing absenteeism and turnover has been developed by organisations (Torrington, 2005). The health industry in Cameroon, however, has done very little to improve retention and employee satisfaction through mentoring programs. Employees are fainting, exhausted and frustrated with work performed every day in the same transactional tasks. The value of rotation of work therefore depends year after year on the physical and mental needs of employees who have similar jobs (McCourt and Eldridge, 2003).

It has also been discovered that the employees in most major hospitals in Buea Health District lack the right attitude toward training because they consider it hectic and stressful. This problem could also pose a threat to labour turnover. It is against this background that the researcher seeks to examine the effects of Human resource training and development on employees’ performance in health facilities in the Buea Health District.

1.3. Research Questions

1.3.1 Main Research Question

From the foregoing statement of the problem, the main research question is; how does human resource training and development affect employees’ performance of health facilities in the Buea Health District? This is broken down into (04) specific questions as follows:

1.3.2 Specific Research Questions

1. How does mentoring influence employees’ performance of health facilities in the Buea Health District?
2. How does job-rotation influence employees’ performance of health facilities in the Buea Health District?
3. To what extent does job delegation influence employees’ performance of health facilities in the Buea Health District?
4. To what extent does employee empowerment influence the employees’ performance of health facilities in the Buea Health District?

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