CHAPTER ONE

1.1         INTRODUCTION

In the last couple of years, organizations especially in Africa have been hit with the undisputable fact that the creation of competitive advantage lies in people. Organizations have increasingly recognized the potential for their people to be a source of competitive advantage. Not too long ago, so called HR functions was the preserve of “Personnel Managers” whose duties were to recruit and select, appraise, promote and demote. These superficial duties could be performed by any manager, it therefore never seemed necessary to employ an expert in the form of a human resource manager let alone create a whole department dedicated to HRM. Little attention was paid to human resource management issues and its impact on organisational performance. The emphasis on traditions and socio-cultural issues injected an element of subjectivity in „personnel manager‟ functions such as recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, promotion, demotion, and compensation. In today’s competitive and rapidly changing business world, organisations especially in the service industry need to ensure maximum utilisation of their resources to their own advantage; a necessity for organisational survival. Studies have shown that organisations can create and sustain competitive position through management of non-substitutable, rare, valuable, and inimitable internal resources (Barney, 1991). HRM has transcended from policies that gather dust to practices that produce results. Human resource management practices has the ability to create organisations that are more intelligent, flexible and competent than their rivals through the application of policies and practices that concentrate on recruiting, selecting, training skilled employees and directing theirbest efforts to cooperate within the resource bundle of the organisation. This can potentially consolidate organisation performance and create competitive advantage as a result of the historical sensitivity of human resources and the social complex of policies and practices that rivals may not be able to imitate or replicate their diversity and depth. Lately, organisations are focused on achieving superior performance through the best use of talented human resources as a strategic asset. HRM policies or strategies must now be aligned to business strategies for organisational success. No matter the amount of technology and mechanisation developed, human resource remains the singular most important resource of any success-oriented organisation. After all, successful businesses are built on the strengths of exceptional people. HRM has now gained significance academically and business wise and can therefore not be relegated to the background or left in the hands of non-experts. Attention must be paid to the human resources organisations spent considerable time and resources to select. Armstrong (2009) defines Human Resource Management (HRM) as a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organisation‟s most valued assets; that is, the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of its objectives. Moreover, Human resource management practices can be defined as a set of organisational activities that aims at managing a pool of human capital and ensuring that this capital is employed towards the achievement of organisational objectives (Wright and Boswell, 2002). The adoption of certain bundles of human resource management practices has the ability to positively influence organisation performance by creating powerful connections or to detract from performance when certain combinations of practices are inadvertently placed in the mix (Wagar and Rondeau, 2006). So if we think human resource management as just the services any manager may provide in recruiting and selecting, appraising, training and compensating employees, then we rather would have to take the backseat for those who understand the influence HRM has on corporate performance to take the centre stage. Research has recorded a positive relationship between human resource management practices and corporate performance. Thus in order to stimulate corporate performance, management is required to develop skilled and talented employees who are capable of performing their jobs successfully (Klein, 2004). Achieving better corporate performance requires successful, effective and efficient exploit of organisation resources and competencies in order to create and sustain competitive position locally and globally. HRM policies on selection, training and development, performance appraisal, compensation, promotion, incentives, work design, participation, involvement, communication, employment security, etc must be formulated and implemented by HRM specialist with the help of line managers to achieve the following outcomes: competence, cooperation with management, cooperation among employees, motivation, commitment, satisfaction, retention, presence, etc In fact, Ahmad and Schroeder (2003) found a positive influence of human resource management practices (information sharing, extensive training, selective hiring, compensation and incentives, status differences, employment security, and decentralization and use of teams) on organisational performance as operational performance (quality, cost reduction, flexibility, deliverability and commitment). In furtherance of this assertion, Sang (2005) also found a positive influence of human resource management practices (namely, human resource planning, staffing, incentives, appraisal, training, team work, employee participation, status difference, employment security) on organisation performance. The study wishes to study the effect of human resource on the performance of government establishments using the ministry of finance Enugu as the case study.

1.2       STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

     The scope of this research project was to identify the effect of human resources on the performance of government establishments. What are existing problems? As the case therefore, some of the problems to be observed in the establishments such as;

·        Poor performance

·        Poor Management

·        Lack of adequate remuneration

·        Lack of training/motivation

·        Miss appropriation and diversion of fund.

·        Lack of proper perception of the government vision and mission by the administrators., rigid government policy

·        None employment of professionals

·        Too much to do and little time to do it.

·        Findings the human resources strength of the government establishment in Enugu state, with particular reference to the ministry of finance and Economic planning, Enugu.

·        Finding some causes and the effect of inadequate human resources in the ministry.

·        Finding out how and who are supposed to build up the human resources of the government establishment.

 

1.3   OBJECTIVE OF THE SUTDY

          Smith and Brown were of the opinion that goal setting as at the heart of the performance appraisal process of organization gives meaning and relevance to appraisal and development activities. The objectives of this research will be as follows:

a.           Letting government to know that the human resources performance in Enugu State is very important. Therefore when the government Department concerned got informed, the objective of this study will be achieved.

b.           To examine the effect of human resource on employees’ productivity

c.            Finally, to identify how to tackle the poor management lack of training and who is supposed to build up the government human resources inadequate. Government as referred above is everybody. Therefore, effort needs to be made to identify. The segment of government that is vested with the task.

The effect of identifying how and who will advise government on some of the causes and effects of poor human resources management on the performance of government establishments. This was because it is only when the causes of a particular problem are identified that some remedial solutions should be embarking on:

·        Motivating the human resources department.

·        Workers should enjoy remuneration employment of qualified staff.

·        Promotion should be done when due constant training and development of Civil Servant while in Service in other to Corp with their job.

·        Establishing of an assessment centres.

·        Government should pass good legislature favouring the employees. In other to have better form of mind to enhance productivity as well as efficiency.

Finally if all these been looked into it will improve the inadequate human resources performance in government establishments because objective is not only to identify problems, but it is aimed at finding solutions to them.

 

1.4       SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY:

     According to this research work, it will be of benefit to the government establishments in the following ways:

          The significance of the effect of human resources on the performance of government establishment.

 It will cover the followings:

·        The findings of the study stand as a source of ready information from the establishment.

·        Recommendation would be a source of information to various organizations on their effort to improve on their human resources performance.

·        To rebrand human resources in other to enhance their attitudinal change in exercising their duties in government establishments. The cause of this unemployment in Nigeria includes mismanagement of human resources.

·        However, some authors were of opinion that the reasons for poor performance in Government establishments were because poor and unskilled human resource management.

The study will also aim at getting the federal government of Nigeria to look into the following:

·        Lack of motivation

·        Low salary

·        No housing scheme and scholarship award. For civil servant children.

·        Rigid government policy on civil servant.

·        Minimizing the suffering of the employees already in service, the result will be that the duties formerly undertaken by only one employee will then be shared among other employees to reduce cumbersome work load.

Finally, is getting government useful information and guide in the area of utilizing its human resources in the best possible ways. Leonard R. Sayless and George Syrauss said that management must provide orderly pathways down ward as well as upward and seek to minimize the personnel and organizational disruption associated with cut back in employment. That is, disruption in any organizational activity will be completely eliminated when government starts managing her human resources which include: planning, organizing, staffing, coordinating, directing, reporting and budgeting for her human resources.

1.5   RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1.  What is the effect of human resource performance on the employees’ productivity?

2.  What area in which the performance of human resource have effect?

3.  What level is this poor performance of human resource existing?

4.  What are the major causes of the poor performance of human resource in government establishments?

1.6   SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope is to look into the effect of inadequate human resources in respect of the performance of government establishment in Enugu.

The sources of human resources as well as causes effect and solution to inadequate human resources and on the performance of government establishment and also to give recommendation and suggest remedies to the poor performance of Enugu state government with particular reference to ministry of finance. 

 

1.7    LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The research is focused on the effect of inadequate resources on the performance of government establishments (Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning Enugu). Due to certain problems that emanated from experience encountered insufficient data, high cost of transportation, difficulties in getting exeat permit from the school authority.

a.       Lack of Information: success of research depends on the availability of information or data. In this research because of the bureaucracy in the government establishments, their officials at times refuse to release certain information this contributed in limiting the scope of the research work.

b.     Finance:    Covering the whole 5 departments of the ministry would have given more understanding of the topic. But due to lack of finance it was limited to (2) two departments the personnel and statistics Departments.

c.       Time also stood as constraints to the researcher in traveling to other ministries but it was limited to only to departments in Enugu state.

1.7    DEFINATION OF TERMS:

Floppo (1986:10) defined human resources as the planning organizing directing and controlling of the procurement development compensation, integration and maintenance of people for the purpose of contributing to the organizational goals.

The word effectiveness, efficiency is the means that some one or something being in a state well without waste it is the ability to apply the best methods and principles in the doing of a thing or reaching a decision it is the ability to follow the best and shortest route to a destination. 

Efficiency can be defined as fitness or power to accomplish or success in accomplishing the purpose intended by oxford dictionary.

Effectiveness:

According to the same dictionary effectiveness is the ability or power to have noticeable or desired effect. Maurice Odo defined it as a effect of the means employed.

          R.B.N. Owele in a class lecture “says that effectiveness relate to production output which are intended to yield desired output from these definition the researcher regards effectiveness as the extends to which achievement has been made of set objectives

Effective:

The oxford advanced learner dictionary says that to be effective means to have a noticeable or desired effect it means to produce desired result.

          Dr. Maurice Odo says that efficiency is the means to end. He wants further to say that specific issue with the intention of achieving the set down goals.

          Manpower can be defined as the number of workers needed or available to do or perform a particular job at any period of time.

 

 

Productivity:

This the amount of production in relation to the labour employed it is the quantity of output resulting from a given level of resource input.

Motivation:

Motivation has been defined as the inner drive that causes one to act or person inner state that energies sustain and direct behavior to satisfy a person’s needs (Milkovich and Glueck 1995)

According to Donald (1992), motivation is the act of stimulating someone to action by creating state environment in which their motivation can be unleashed and through providing a reason or incentive for people to produce more therefore employee motivation can cause one to abandon one’s goal for the goal of an organization motivation is the key factor that gingers or energies an individual or group of individuals towards the achievement of any pre-stage goals.

 

 

Training:

To train as according to Oxford advanced learner dictionary is to give teaching and practice in order to bring to a desired stand and behavior efficiency or physical condition, training therefore is the act of teaching in the industrial or business concept. It is the act of level of the expectations of their employer. 

The sources of human resources in government establishments and as well as problem associated to inadequate human resources and to give some recommendation and suggest solution to the performance of Enugu state government with a particular reference to the ministry of finance.

REFERENCES

Onah, F.O. (2003). Human Resource Management Enugu.

          Fuhhadu Publishing Company.

Obikeze, S., & Obi, E. (2003) Public Administration in Nigeria, A

          Developmental Approach Onisha Book Point Ltd.

Obikeze, O. &Abonyi, (2005) Personnel Management Concept,

          Practice & Application Onitsha Book Point Ltd.

Oxford Advance Dictionary.

Maurice Odo “Efficiency” (ESUT classroom lecture note).

Oxford Advance Learners Dictionary.

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