The influence of values based Job description on employee performance: evidence from Sri Lanka

Abstract

In the Sri Lankan industry set up, there is a relatively high employee turnover among the female workers accounting 39.5% in 2017 within the first six months of employment (Sri Lankan Labour Demand Survey, 2017). It can be a mismatch with organization culture, work schedule, skills and competencies. According to the Gibson Theory, there are three sets of variables that affect employee performance and work behaviour: individual variables, organizational variables and psychological variables. Organizational variables include organizational resources, leadership style, compensation, and structure and job design. Hence, in order to increase employee performance, employees should be well- matched with the organizational values. In the values based job description, organizational core values are included in the job descriptions by facilitating higher management of the organization to recruit and retain employees who well-match with the job position and core values of the organization. The current study attempts to identify the impact of values based job description on employee performance. Honesty, passion, learning and integrity are included as company’s core values. The research sample consisted of randomly selected 65 employees from one of the leading companies which implemented value based job description representing all the employee categories of the company. An unstructured questionnaire was designed by using 5- point Likert scale to collect data by integrating values into the job descriptions. Data on employee performance were collected from the employee performance appraisals reports, which were done by the company before and after implementing the values based job description. After analyzing the data by using R statistical package and applying a regression model, the results show that the honesty and passion have a positive relationship with the employee performance, but the other two factors do not have a significant relationship with the performance. It can be substantiated that values based job description could lead for a better employee performance in Sri Lankan context too.