Influence of Selected Human Resource Practices on Employee Job Performance: A Critical Literature Review

Employee performance refers to the final fulfillments of an employee with respect to meeting certain targets within the prescribed period of time.Gibson et al., (2010) argue that employee performance can be perceived to be the ability of an employee to realize high profit, quality production, large market share for the product produced and the ability to survive in a competitive field.Koontz and Donnell (2013) see employee performance as the manifestation of the productivity of the employees in terms of revenue, profit, growth, development and expansion of organization.Enhancing performance requires a balance between employee motivation and achieving organization's goals and objectives.Proper human resource management practices will by extension result in managing organizational performance.It is also vital to note that employee performance determines survival of organization in a competitive world of business.Human resource management (HRM) practices have a significant role in the enhancement of employee performance (EP).Organizations pursue proactively HRM practices and systems to capitalize on strength of this vital asset for sustained competitive advantage (Jackson & Schuler, 2000).Becker, Huselid and Ulrich (2001) argued that because organizations consider human capital one of the most salient organizational assets in establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage, many are investing considerable resources to support employee and organizational development activities such as training and development, employee reward schemes, performance appraisal among other activities.The sugar industry worldwide is faced by complex problems affecting both developed and developing countries (FAO, 2012).Most of these problems result from poor HRM practices that greatly influence employee performance.Human resource has been recognized as a strategic tool, essential to organizational profitability and sustainability.This realization has led to the new role of human resource managers as strategic partners in formulation and implementing organizational strategy (Myloni, Harzing&Mirza, 2004).Much research has demonstrated statistically relationships between measures of HRM practices and firm profitability (Guthrie, 2001).While these studies have been useful for demonstrating the potential value created through HRM practices, they have revealed very little regarding the processes through which this value is created (Wright & Gardner & Wright,2003).Also other researchers like Purcell et al., (2003) referred to this as the black box problem, noting that the conceptual development of the mediating mechanisms through which HRM has an impact on profitability has thus far eluded empirical testing.Among the HRM practices that have been known to affect employee performance are training practices, reward practices and disciplinary procedures.The interrelations of these variables continue to draw keen interest from researchers.Proper HRM practices enable organizations to optimize resource and achieve high effectiveness.Organizations take time to nurture and develop human capital in the form of knowledge, skills, abilities, motivation, attitude, and interpersonal relationship, and make it difficult for competitors to imitate (Becker &Gerhart, 1996).Pfeffer (1994) stressed that human resource has been vital for firm sustained performance.