Human Resource

In an increasingly competitive environment were the performance of an organisation and gaining competitive advantage calls for a need to have an effective and efficient workforce, it is becoming a must for recruitment and selection to be fierce. Meaning that, Human resource departments are spending more and are taking more time in choosing employees that they feel would be high performers in the organization. They try to get the right person, in the right place, at the right time. However, once the required workforce are in place, there is still a lot that Human Resource departments and overall management needs to do in order to be able to ensure that employees perform as anticipated.

Work performance can be interpreted as the amount of effort people put in their work in relation to what is expected of them. The performance of employees greatly influences the overall performance of the organization. Human Resource management therefore needs to focus a lot on what determines the performance of employees so that they are able to respond to a certain extent to these determinants that will eventually benefit the organization. What actually determines work performance? It is argued that key determinants of work performance are ability, constraints and motivation.

Ability can be defined as capability and competence of an individual. To a certain extent, the ability of an individual is known to the employer upon selecting the employee for the job. Whether the individual is the right person for the job is decided based on his ability versus what the employer is seeking. However, the performance of the employer may end up below what is expected and therefore the level of performance may not reach the level expected. This may be because the person was not meant for the job or perhaps it has to do with other determinants such as lack of motivation and constraints. There is also the issue that once in the organisation, the employee may be performing highly and may have the ability to go higher and but may not be given the chance by management to do so and therefore this will impact the employees work performance. On the other hand, the management might have selected the right person for the job, develops that person and ends up reaping high work performance.

Another determinant of work performance is argued to be constraints. Constraints can be defined as restrictions. Work performance can be influenced by constraints such as lack of resources to work with and managerial style. Management may have a system that does not give employees the chance to grow. It may also be personal problems of employee that has an effect on the performance. Some employees are able to surpass certain constraints while others are unable to do so.

Motivation is also argued to be a determinant of work performance. According to Robbins et.al (2005) it is defined as the process that account for an individuals willingness to exert high levels of effort to