AN EVALUATION OF THE IMPACT OF WAGES AND SALARIES POLICIES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF WORKERS OF NATIONAL EYE CENTRE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Employer provides work for employees just as employee on the other hand enables organization and nation to provide or produce goods and services for the ultimate benefit of mankind (O’ Donnell 2000).

This is essentially in the nation building process.  When goods are provided and services rendered, economy benefits also come to play.  According to an abstract of employment, employers pays workers for productivity and services.  This is of a symbolic advantage because just as employee help employers to make profit, the employer also give wages and salaries to employees to enable them meet their personal and domestic aspirations.

Fairly to pay wages and salaries has resulted in very important conflict in labour and management relation.  Therefore, wages and salaries according to Mackenzie is the most significant reward that would assist them to have a good standard of living.

Wages and salaries are used as motivational factors or strategies (Micheal A. 2005).  This is explain by piece: rate system which allows payment of wages in relation to job done, in addition, people have been seen to converse for work in organization, wages and salaries are no charitable grant by organization but a significant aspect of the right of worker in the productivity process.  Payment must be made for job done by labour.  Profit made should not only be for growth and development of companies while workers suffer physically and economically.

The idea of national minimum wage is based on the understanding of the fact that there must be a border line under which employers must not fall in the payment of salaries and wages to workers who need to maintain a living standard.

1.2      STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

This research is carried out to evaluate wages and salaries policies on the performance of government parastatals in Nigeria with a case study of National Eye Centre Kaduna.  Despite the services rendered by the public sector, salary increment is still a problem.  The agitation for more salary is still on because of increasing level of standard of living.  The global economic crisis also has brought about the agitation for salary increment and this is the reason for almost all the industrial action being embarked by personnel working in government parastatals.

In the case of salary increment, my research also recorded poor performance in government parastatals.  This means that the services rendered are not commensurate to the money been paid an employee.  For instance even when there is increment for worker in government parastatals, we still notice inadequate performance, this is applicable to all parastatals like water board, education sector, power holding company of Nigeria etc. with all this increment, why is the performance in government parastatals still poor?

Could it be that wages and salaries policies are defective? Then this research work intend to find out the influence of wages and salaries policies in government parastatals.

1.3      OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

This research work is an effort to determine the influence of wages and salaries policies on the performance of workers in government parastatals in Nigeria.

i.             This work is meant to find out government policies with respect to wages and salaries in various government parastatals.

ii.            The research work will also find out the problems government parastatals are facing in implementing wages and salaries in Nigeria.

iii.          This is to determine the effectiveness of wages and salaries policies on the performance of personnel working in government parastatals.

1.4      SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The following are the reason that makes this study a worthwhile.

1.           The study is expected to create awareness among organizations especially government parastatals on the positive impact which wages and salaries policies can have on the performance of government workers.

2.           The study will also be of importance to student who are interested in knowing how wages and salaries policies can affect performance in organization.

1.5      RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

H0: Increase in salaries and wages does not influence the performance of workers in government parastatals in Nigeria.

H1: Increase in salaries and wages influences the performance of workers in government parastatals in Nigeria.

1.6      SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This research work conducted to examine the possible relationship between wages and salaries policies and the overall performance in an organization using National Eye Centre Kaduna as a case study and primary source of data.

The major research work also highlights some of the major important sector for improving the quality of policy of wages and salaries in government parastatals.  Hence it is not a comprehensive study of the whole parastatals.  The study has been retrieved to some selected areas of the parastatals salary administration using the Human Resources Management Department.

1.7      LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

Some of the limitation encountered in the course of this study were poor response to some of the verbal interview and the questionnaires.

Also, there was lack of adequate funds to obtaining relevant information from National Eye Centre and from other sources.

Lastly, the time frame of the research which was too short also pose some limitation to this work.