Effects of personal characteristics on employee performance in medium class hotels in Kisumu City, Kenya

Abstract

Work performance has been identified as the significant key for both manufacturing and service industries/ or organizations to gain competitive advantage and superior productivity. Although competitive advantage is more relevant to private sector, it can be extended to public sector by including ‘serving the public’ because it is the ultimate objective of the public sector The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of personal characteristics on employee performance in medium class hotels in Kisumu city, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to examine the effects of age, gender, marital status, education level, job title, years worked, job status and salary scale on employee performance. The study adopted survey research design. The target population was 187 employees in medium class hotels. Simple random sampling and stratified sampling were used for this study. Questionnaires were used as research instruments. Descriptive and inferential statistics (ANOVA and Chi square) were used to analyze the data. From the ANOVA and Chi square results, it indicates that that there is significance difference between age, gender, marital status, education level, job title, years worked, job status and salary scale on employee performance (P=.005). The management should monitor individual changes in personal characteristics to ensure they are nurtured inline with performance.