AN ASSESSMENT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF BALANCED SCORECARD WITH REFERENCE TO EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF OROMIA REGIONAL HEALTH BUREAU

Abstract

This study aimed at assessing the attitude and perception of employees towards the Balanced Scorecard, BSC; pinpointing the benefits enjoyed and gaps observed in implementing it; and examining the way employees are evaluated and subsequent merits are managed. The study is mainly a descriptive research by design where self-administered questionnaires and in-depth interview were used as the main data collection instruments. The study involved 214 employees working at the Oromia Regional Health Bureau. It applied a systematic random sampling technique to select a sample size of 135 respondents and 4 informants by picking every second member from the population frame. The data collected is analyzed using version 25 of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The major study findings were tabulated and presented for later summary. The study identified the existence of untrained staff, absence of daily record keeping mechanisms, lack of providing regular feedbacks, the use of evaluation criteria that is subjective and full of bias and non-transparent reward system as the major findings. Based on the collected data, the Oromia Regional Health Bureau has at least put a management and measurement system in its units with the exception of the few. The study also showed areas the ORHB needs to work on like training, daily record keeping and feedback mechanism, evaluation criteria, and its reward system. In addition, less commitment among the top management has been observed as confirmed by both the respondents and informants. The study recommended that the management should carry out its responsibility in revising the BSC document as per the current structure in order to fully implementation it in all its departments. The Bureau is also expected to organize BSC specific training, put a mechanism for daily record keeping and feedback, formulate clear evaluation criteria, and make its reward system transparent. Finally, the top management has to maximize its commitment in executing its leadership role in coaching, supporting and strengthening the Monitoring and Evaluation system.