The Impact of Training on Employee Performance at the Mahikeng Local Municipality: North West Province

Abstract

The main focus of this study was to investigate the influence of training on employee quality performance in the Mahikeng Local Municipality (North West Province). The problem statement involves the challenges that comes along with the incompetency of employees caused by lack of skill and development. The study aimed at finding out the nature of training implementation in the Municipality, the role of training on the employee performance, procedures and processes that can be suggested to enhance individual's skills and development. Lastly, the challenges that comes along with training of employees that have in the past affected their performance. The researcher adopted the quantitative research method, which constituted of the distribution of the questionnaires to the Mahikeng Local Municipality employees and documentations. Quantitative method involved questionnaires that were distributed to 100 employees out of 817 populations from all different levels, in different structures of the Municipality. The Municipality is comprised of 817 employees. A sample was drawn from the employees who are office based, however, only 100 employees were selected by the researcher to participate. Out of the 100 questionnaires that were distributed to employees, only 87 employees managed to participate. The selection of participative employees involved both males and females and included section 57 managers. The study has revealed that even though the Municipal's structure indicates that the municipality has training unit as one of its core component of HRM, training of employees is still regarded ineffective. It is revealed by the study that the implementation of training in the Mahikeng Local Municipality is still unplanned, unsystematic and haphazard - not every employee is taken for training and skills development programmes at least twice a year. It was also discovered that the current training practices, methods and processes are inconsistent with the provisions of the policy, also, the budgetary allocation for training was discovered to be the key challenge in implementing training. The study in all aspects have tried to recommend all the solutions that might not have been applied before by the municipality, to better their performance.