ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION AS A CORRELATE OF STAFF PERFORMANCE IN STATE POLYTECHNIC LIBRARIES IN NORTH CENTRAL, NIGERIA

Abstract

The major responsibility of human resources is to facilitate service provision and delivery. Libraries in the polytechnic system, are established to provide high quality information services in support of teaching and research for academic staff members as well as acquisition of knowledge of students. The study was carried out for the purpose of determining the relationship between organizational communication and staff performance in State polytechnic libraries in North Central, Nigeria. A correlational survey design was used to find out the relationship between organizational communication and staff performance in the State polytechnic libraries in North Central, Nigeria. The population of the study consisted of one hundred and eight (108) professionals (librarians), para-professionals (library officers) and non-professionals (computer operators and Administrative staff) in the State polytechnic libraries in the North Central, Nigeria. Since the population is not too large to manage, there was no sampling. Questionnaire and interview were used for data collection. Out of the 108 copies of questionnaire distributed, 94 copies were returned and used for data analysis. This gave a response rate of 87%. The data collected were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Coefficient for answering research question 2 while mean and standard deviation were used to answer questions 1, 3 and 4 . The responses from the interview were analyzed qualitatively while regression analysis was used to test the two null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results indicate that the value of correlation coefficient(r) of Organizational Communication is 0.257 showing low relationship between Organizational Communication and Staff performance. The study also showed that the problems that militate against staff performance in the state polytechnic libraries are, among others, the absence of effective communication between the leadership and the staff, no opportunity for team work, supervisors don’t listening ears to their subordinates, etc. The recommendations include; written directives and reports should be clear and concise, there should be timely communication about decisions in an organization, bridging of communication gap between the leaders and staff, etc.