Influence of soft skills on career development: Exploring performance appraisal as a mediating mechanism

Human resources at different levels are the executives of organizational tasks toward excellence. Missing the track of human resources will leave the organization behind. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of SHRM components on organizational excellence. The study was applied to industrial organizations in Industrial City in Northern Jordan. A quantitative approach was used to accomplish the objectives. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire was composed of three parts: the first part designed to collect demographic data, the second part designed to collect information about SHRM (recruitment, training, development, and career development), the last part designed to collect information about organizational excellence. A simple random sample of 120 organizations’ managers was studied. The results showed that the data collection tool was reliable. The results showed that training was of high concern by managers to reach excellence, followed by organizational development, then career development, and the least evaluation was for recruitment. The SHRM components affect the components of organizational excellence (customer satisfaction, technology deployment, product quality, and competitiveness) (p < 0.05). Recruitment was the highest contributor to organizational excellence related to technology deployment, product quality, and competitiveness, but customer satisfaction was affected by development and career development. The study recommended that the organization connect the SHRM strategy with the other organization activities that lead to excellence with the recruitment process’s concentration as it affects the products of the organizations.

There is a growing concern about the lack of skilled municipal employees who can deliver essential services to under-resourced local communities in South Africa. However, coaching and mentoring appear underutilized to train municipal employees to improve service delivery to local communities. The study aims to investigate whether coaching and mentoring could capacitate municipal employees whose performance appraisal reveals a lack of skills to provide essential services. A cross-sectional research design was adopted to conduct a survey. The target population comprised 265 municipal employees, and a stratified random sample of 115 employees completed a questionnaire. The employees held positions of general managers, general assistants, and administrators, with varied years of experience. Cronbach’s Alpha indicated an overall high 0.8 questionnaire reliability score.
Using a quantitative method, responses from municipal employees were collected to examine their perceptions of the influence of training and development on employee performance and service delivery. Hypotheses were tested using the bivariant inferential statistical tests of correlation (r) and Chi-square (χ2). The results indicated that training and development were more likely to improve employee performance. Furthermore, the results showed that trained employees were more likely to improve service delivery. In particular, coaching and mentoring could be used to improve performance. Therefore, the study found that the municipality was not providing employees with relevant training and development to enable them to address poor service delivery. Finally, the study recommends that the municipality invests in training and development to enrich employees with new skills and knowledge to improve the quality of service delivery.

Performance appraisal is the bedrock of talent management and has received much attention from scholars and researchers alike in their pursuit to develop accurate, objective, and robust Performance Management Systems (PMS). Through survey questionnaire the present study examines the prevalence of idiosyncratic rater biases on the performance appraisal systems and evaluates the measure of its impact. The correlations between the personality traits and the similarities of the raters’ workplace characteristics with the raters’ performance ratings are also determined. The study has provided empirical evidence of the manifestation of idiosyncratic rater bias in the company under study. The idiosyncratic rater tendencies showed a significant impact on performance ratings. It was seen that about one-third of the variations in the ratings were resultant of the idiosyncratic factors, such as similarities in the personality traits and workplace identities. It is also found that there exists a positive correlation between the similarities in the identities, as well as the personality traits of the raters and the ratees, and the way the rating awarded by the rater.