EFFECTS OF STAFF EVALUATION ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF CIVIL SERVANTS

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Public organizations are created to ensure rapid socio-economic development through the initiation, implementation and evaluation of government policies and programme in order to improve and better the lives of the masses of the nation. As an aid in achieving its objectives, resources, both human and otherwise are allocated to be efficiently and effectively utilized in respect to that.

The origin of public organization in Nigeria could be tied to the genesis of civil service in Nigeria and this dates back to about to middle of the nineteen century when direct British rule was established over the kingdom and territory of Lagos after its conquest in 1861 (Uche, 2004:47). During this period, the existing public organizations (that is, the civil service) was perceived as an instrument set up to implement and execute the self centered exploitative, policies and programmes of the British intention. Observing the point Okoli and Onah (2000:73) posited that the colonial civil service was machinery.

It is quite a pity that inspite of the numerous public organizations in existence and the huge amount of resources channeled to keep them functional, the performance of civil servants in terms of productivity is very low and hardly felt by the average man in the society. The socio-economic condition of the country is deteriorating at a very fast rate as the days go by and poverty is on the increase.

Touched with the present poor performance of civil servants, scholars, committees, researchers, bureau and many investigate and administrative study groups have written journals and books, organized seminars and conferences to determine the root cause to the problems of civil servants and if possible offer solutions where necessary. However the common problems given by scholars for the unproductiveness of public workers also known as civil servants are corruption, over staffing, godfathers, politicization, red-tapism and management.

Be that as it may, the government of Nigeria has initiated and put in place programmes orientation programs, in service, training, study leave with pay, staff development programmes, staff evaluation, to mention that the researcher intends to critically examine one of these aforementioned programme, that is staff evaluation to know if it has any impact on the productivity and performance of public organizations workers in Nigeria.

1.1 Statement of the Problem

The performance of civil servants in Nigeria has become a subject of national debate and hence a matter of crucial policy agenda of the governments of this country for the past two decades, few among the problems of leading to the poor productivity of civil servants will be discussed below:

First and one of the major problems of civil servants is corruption. Corruption according to Amalu (2003:328) is an exploitation of the public which can occur only because of the civil (public) servants occupies a constitutionally independent position, it is obvious that corruption by the above definition has eaten so deep into the fabrics of the Nigerian society that is Nigerians. Public servants now see public organizations as a platform for looting and siphoning funds and resources meant for the proper functioning of these organizations.

The concept of “godfatherism” is yet another problem confronting the efficient and effective performance of the public organizations. It has become so pronounced that it is now accepted as a tradition and the only way one can get fixed into any of the public organizations in Nigeria when these so called civil servants through the influence of their godfather get into these organizations, all their intentions is to satisfy their self interest and that of their godfather mentors to the detriment of the organizational goals and objectives.

The problem of politicalization This endemic and sickly phenomenon is pronounced in Nigeria that virtually all appointment into these organizations must have political trappings for underpinnings. Appointments are given as a reward to subservient party affiliates and loyalties whether they are qualified for the position or not.

Having a comprehensive understanding and clear picture of the Olympian height of politicization in Nigeria, Onah (2003:23) noted that, a consistent way in which the federal government encroaches on the powers of the state government is through politicization of government bureaucracies.

It can be adduced from the above statement that civil servants who are politically appointed will automatically dance to the tune and directive of the party dictates as against that of the organization. As a result, the organization will be lacking in philosophy as there will be conflicting directives.

However, it is in line with above problems that the researcher intends to carry out in-depth study on staff evaluation to know whether it has any impact on the productivity and performance of public organization workers in Nigeria.

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1.3 Objectives of the Study

The proper objective of this research is to determine the effect of staff evaluation on the productivity of civil servants:

1. Find out the relationship between staff evaluation and productivity of Enugu state civil service commission.
2. Find out the factors that hinder effective and efficient staff evaluation in Enugu state civil service commission (ESCSC).
3. To proffer solution to the identified problems.

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1.4 Research Question

• Is there any relationship between staff evaluation and the performance and productivity of Enugu state civil service commission?
• What are the factors that lead o effective and efficient staff evaluation in Enugu state civil service commission?
• How can these identified problems in Enugu state civil service commission be addressed?

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1.5 Significance of Study

This is undertaken out to ascertain the processes and procedures that are involved in staff evaluation and the impact it has on the performance and productivity of productivity of public organizations in Enugu state.

Since the work was completed using tests, experiments and experience both of the researcher and the respondents, it will be very advantageous to prospective academic researchers who made research on the same subject matter.

Theoretically, the study will contribute very much to the already literature on the subject area. Also in theory, the body of this research will provide ample opportunity for managers to adopt a favorable performance bossing method in improving the performance of their staff in organization.

Empirically, the results will be of immense benefit to the federal civil service commission (FCSC). The commission empowered among other things to determine the recruitment, appraisal, promotion and retirement of public organizational workers in Nigeria.

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1.6 Scope of the study

For the obvious fact there exist numerous public organization in Nigeria, it will be very hectic for the researcher to cover the entire civil servants in the country.

Consequently, this study was narrowed down to Enugu state civil service commission, where all findings being equal, generalizations will be drawn.

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1.7 limitation of the study

The reasons for parading this study to Enugu state civil service commission was due to some limitations encountered by the researcher which would have served as a major impediment to the success of this work.

Among these limitations, the major one was insufficient time, within the time frame given for this research, it was not easy for the researcher to conduct on exhaustive study on all staff of public organizations and at the same time attend to other academic engagements.

Insufficient financial support was another limitation to the research, a study of this nature requires enough money to enable the researcher gather relevant information and materials, cover transportation cost of regularly visiting the organization from her institution to obtain necessary data.

Yet another limitation of this study was the differently encountered by the research in convincing some of the workers to supply the needed information through the open ended part of the questionnaire administered by the researcher. Besides, some of the workers subjected the research to rigorous bureaucratic.

However, despite these constraints, the researcher was successfully carried out through effective good tie and financial man in assembling extant and related literature.

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1.8 Conceptual and Operational Definition of Terms

For the better apprehension of this study of this nature, the following core concepts will be based on the specific meaning they represent. They are as follows:

1. Staff evaluation
2. Civil servants
3. Productivity
4. Performance

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1. Staff evaluation

The concept staff evaluation from the onset of this chapter has been defined differently by various scholars based on their social, political, cultural and ideological learning. We shall for this study, take staff evaluation to mean those standars, procedures and processes for assessing how well an employee performs his job reflectively in accordance with specific objectives and using the result obtained in the exercise to promote, retain, demote and if possible increase the salary of the workers of such employee.

2. Civil Servants

Civil servants are those persons who are employed into the institutions or establishment of state, to run and manage the day to day activity of the institution. They are officially also referred to as public servants.

3. Productivity

For this research work, we shall narrowly see productivity as the measure of how well resources are brought together in organization and utilized for accomplishing a set of results.