CHALLENGES OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FOR EMPLOYEES WITH DISABILITIES WORKING AT SAFARICOM LIMITED, KENYA

Abstract

Employees play a very essential role in achieving organisational objectives. As performance management of employees is one of the critical undertakings of human capital management to achieve business goals. The current workforce comprises of employees with disabilities whose performance management is equally important. However, the performance management has not been without its challenges. In this line, this study explored the challenges facing performance management of employees with disabilities. The study was a case study of Safaricom Ltd. Ten line manager were interviewed and the data analysed by qualitative content analysis where the identified key challenges were grouped under respective themes and then discussed in line with the thematic approach in the content analysis. Results were reported by means of narratives with explanations of the various major issues that were captured. Elaborate explanations were given describing the pertinent issues that were raised. The study found during performance review, there is lack of openness by employees with disabilities in stating strengths, weaknesses and special adjustments. Differentiating choice from disability based behaviours in another challenge that many face. There is a challenge establishing the exact utility of special adjustments and lack of dynamism in the performance management system to reflect changes such as improvement or deterioration in the nature and severity of the disability. The study identified inadequate training of the line managers as one of the challenges that affected performance management process for employees with disability. With this in mind, there is need in improving manager’s ability to manage employees with disability in areas like; knowing what constitutes reasonable adjustments and designing mechanism to establish efficacy and reflect changes, offer relevant training and adequate training to the line managers to enable them handle performance management for employees with disability effectively. The study noted that the firm should introduce a practice of dynamic system which caters for the nature and severity of disability.