Employee perceptions of the relationship between recruitment and selection processes and organisational productivity at a university in the Western Cape province of South Africa

Abstract

This research examines staff perceptions of the recruitment and selection processes in a tertiary education setting in South Africa. It aims to determine if there is a correlation between these perceptions and the productivity of staff. The benefit of this research lies in the fact that tertiary education institutions are at the last rung of the ladder of any nation’s human capacity development initiatives. Thus, if the processes by which they recruit and select their staff are perceived to be flawed, the consequences in the fulfilment of their afore-mentioned mandate would be compromised. There are many tertiary educational institutions in the Western Cape province of South Africa. These include traditional universities, comprehensive universities, a university of technology and FET colleges. This study focuses on one particular tertiary institution in the Western Cape. Due to the position taken by the institute in the current study on privacy issues, the said institution will be referred to as “Institution X”. The research adopted a quantitative data collection and analysis approach because it was deemed to be the most effective, objective and unobtrusive in the circumstance. Data was collected from the population of academic and non-academic staff of an identified faculty within a campus of the institution. The population of this study was 370 staff and the actual sample size represented 30% of the population. Unfortunately the final actual sample size was 106 and not 111 as originally planned. The sample technique that was used for this study was a systematic sample. Therefore, every tenth name on the list that represented the population was selected. The data collection instrument was a researcher-developed, self-administered questionnaire (a Likert-type attitude scale). Ethical clearance was obtained from the institution. Furthermore, a clear statement of informed consent was contained in the questionnaire that was distributed to participants, in addition to clear instructions on how to complete the questionnaire with assurances of strict anonymity and confidentiality of the process. The research revealed that there is a relationship between employee perceptions of recruitment and selection and organisational productivity. Further studies can be initiated to investigate what strategies may be used for recruitment and selection in order to increase productivity, ways in which tertiary educational institutions can increase productivity using recruitment and selection processes and identify challenges and benefits of recruitment and selection processes with regard to productivity. Further studies can also evaluate the impact of recruitment and selection processes on an institution of higher learning.