Influence of Training on Employee Performance in Kakamega East Sub County of Kakamega County, Kenya

Abstract

The demands of the ever-changing business environment world over require a lifelong employee training as a strategy for attaining competitive advantage in the industry. Although a number of studies covering performance of employees have tended to focus upon established business entities, new structures like devolved governments have attracted limited attention. In Kenya, the new constitution of 2010 devolved management of resources to counties, and mandated them to ensure that services are appropriately delivered to the people. However, reports from the national audit indicate that performance of most counties is below expectation, except in some counties like in Kakamega County’s Shinyalu Sub County (or Kakamega East Sub County). Owing to the fact that organizations can only attain set goals through employees, little is known regarding the influence of training approaches on employee performance in the county governments. The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of training on employee performance in Shinyalu Sub County, Kenya. Specific objectives of the study were to: establish the indicators of employee performance; assess employee training approaches used for influencing performance; and to establish the relationship between training approaches and employee performance during 2014/2015 financial year in Kakamega East Sub County of Kakamega County, Kenya. The target population was 19 heads of sections in the sub county. Census method was used to select the heads of sections for the study. Questionnaires were used to collect quantitative data from the study respondents. Descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlations, and Regressions were used for data analysis. The study found that mean employee performance was 3.282 (SD=0.51608) while the mean for training was 2.87 (SD=0.94618). Training was however found to correlate highly (.803 ** <p=0.03, 2 tailed) with employee performance, with a beta of 0.803 and R 2 of 0.645. This suggests that the more favourable training approaches are, the higher employee performance would be in the county government on one hand, and that employee training accounts for 64.5% of employee performance in the county government under study. For the enhancement of performance, the study recommends that adequate training approaches should be put in place by the county governments. Moreover, given that 35.5% of employee performance in Kenyan devolved units, is not explained by employee training, it is recommended that further studies be done on the influence of other human resource practices on employee performance in this area.