For example, when the employee or employer claims that certain objectives in the
appraisal process were agreed upon, what does it really mean? Is it an agreement on the
objectives of the job that they were formerly employed for, the current job, the one writ-
ten on the job description list, the one the boss ‘knows’, the one expected by the em-
ployee, the employer or both? It makes sense that the ‘expected’ job objectives of both
the employer and the employee should override the rest, although the concept ‘expecta-
tion’ suggests that the joint agreement is a controversial issue and a grey area that may
undermine the good intentions of the appraisal model if not handled carefully. That is
when the employer sits with the employee to agree on a performance contract it is like
saying that forget about your past performance and now let us plan to do government
business based on our present expectations. It is the time the employee will sit with the
employer to discuss how to run the business of transacting government business through
OPRAS. This will call for each partner to put his/her cards on the table. For the em-
ployee, what matters is to fulfil the expectations that were the drivers for seeking the job
and may also be changing overtime. If the employer has started ‘a new business’ with
new objectives to accomplish (as of now the public service charter) the level of em-
ployee commitment will depend on how expectations are identified, addressed and met
in the process of achieving the charter-related objectives. This is something the current
model has not been able to address effectively.
The model seems to take the fact those employees will be able to achieve their ex-
pectations for granted when agreeing on how the employer will support the process of
job performance. But this assumption may be right where the employee and employer
will be aware or remember to raise issues to do with identifying and addressing such
expectations objectively and reaching a common understanding based on fair play.
However, there is no strong evidence to suggest that the existing relationships between
the employees and employers during open performance appraisal would allow room for
the level of fair bargaining presupposed in the model.
The support systems section where such issues could be addressed has mostly re-
mained in the form of the provision of working facilities, provision of data, payment of
overtime allowance and some kind of training. Therefore, in order to improve the ap-
praisal process, a section devoted to the identification, assessment and agreement on
employee and employer expectations, as indicated in Tables 12.1 and 12.2, is important.
The section on factors affecting performance is important because it shows the need to
explain both positive and negative factors that influenced performance. This is useful
for improvement. However, leads to the supposition that the appraisals focus more on
expectations because if the performance contract does not meet expectations, perform-
ance may still are low with a list of excuses as appendices that cannot help job perform-
ance, individual jobholders, or the appraiser.
In terms of the efforts to make the appraisal system work, some positive steps al-
ready seem to have been taken by some ministers, principal secretaries and directors
which include sensitisation of staff. However, the pace at which the system is put into
practice is disappointingly low due to a number of reasons, some of which have already
been mentioned as based on general African experiences as well as a lack of readiness
to accept it. Some of the reasons relate to the discrepancy between employee and em-
ployer expectations already discussed at length. The experience from the ministries,
departments, and agencies in Tanzania shows that more than fifty percent of the em-
ployees neither consider open performance appraisal a useful instrument in improving
performance nor do they have any serious commitment to the appraisal process itself.
marcin
(Marcin)
#1