Enhancing Employee Performance in the Water Sector in South Africa: The Role of Training and Skill Development Programmes

Abstract

Training and development are regarded as essential tools for any organisation to achieve its goals. It is widely acknowledged that many institutions invest in their employees' development to enhance their performance and improve productivity. Nevertheless, many institutions in South Africa, including the water sector, regard training and staff development as needless expenditure and often do little to augment their employees' knowledge and skills resulting in lower outputs and a dissatisfied population. Based on these challenges, this paper employed the purposive sampling technique to draw a sample of 100 out of a total of 300 employees from the water sector in four provinces to analysed whether training and development is relevant in enhancing employees’ performance in the water sector. The findings revealed that training and development is not a priority in the sector, and that there are no strategic planning or policy guidelines for staff development. It was further found that training programmes in the sector is bedevilled with both systemic and structural challenges. This paper, therefore, recommend integrative approach to the training of employees and carefully thought-out programmes that identify employees’ weaknesses and introduce strategies that will enable the employees to enhance their skills and expertise at a minimum cost. Keywords: Training, Development, Performance, Public Sector Employees, Water Department .