THE EFFECTS OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT ON EMPLOYEE JOB PERFORMANCE IN SAVANNA AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WA

Abstract

There is no denying fact that, training and development play a crucial role in determining employee job performance in any organization. However, many organizations tend to perform abysmally because they renege on their duty to develop the workforce. Untrained or poorly trained staff tends to underperform and also often make mistakes which lead to spectacular failures. It is against this background that Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI- Wa), periodically undertakes to train its employees. The main research objective is to identify the contributions of training and development on the achievement of the objectives of the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute- Wa. Also, the study sought to research on the effects of training and development on employee job performance, methodologies used in training employees and the challenges the institution faces in its quest to train its employees. The researcher was also interested in identifying performance [actors (including training and development) that have significant effect on employee job performance. The data used [or the study comprised both primary and secondary data. Questionnaires containing closed and open-ended questions were used to collect the primary data while the secondary data were gathered from books. organizational records, journals, and so on. Stratified sampling was used to regroup the heterogeneous population of accountants. Secretaries, drivers. Into smaller homogenous groups thereby reducing sampling biases. Simple Random Sampling (SRS) was then carried out on each smaller homogenous group. Also, Logistic Regression was used to select the performance factors which have a significant relationship with the job performance of an employee and their effects obtained. To assess the overall significance of training and development (and including other performance factors) on employee job performance. I used the Pseudo R squared(R/.).It was found that in a collection of performance factors, training and development with correlation coefficients of 0.82 and 0.79 respectively are the two leading factors that significantly influence employee job performance. As a result it was further found that, training and development help workers are helped to focus, and priority is placed on empowering employees, increased productivity because of increased and improved job performance of employees, employee confidence is built, enabling teamwork development and contributing to better team/organization morale, employees are kept current on new job-related information, thereby contributing significantly to better customer service, employees are updated on new and enhanced skills and so on and so forth. It was also realized that inadequate funds was a problem SJ\RI- Wa faces. It is recommended that, an extended data collection period or preferably a cohort study is used to conduct similar studies across the country, where over time, the job performance of employees exposed to training and development program and that of those employees not exposed is measured and compared to check the robustness of the training and development program