CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

It is not out of place to say that motivation has always be an important and puzzling technique for managers and employers to achieve their organizational goals. As a result, personal management problems and its effects on secondary school teacher’s performance spring from lack of motivation and incentives for the staff and or employees of the organization.

Motivation is referred from people’s behaviours and cannot be directly observed or measured. However, personal management has evolved a member of techniques to improve workers performance through motivation.

Ukeje (1992:76) stressed that “motivation” is a force which energizes and induce a staff to perform. Based on this assertion, Dugguh (2004) has it that, differences in levels of performance is a reflection of difference in levels of motivation. At any point, staffs vary in the extent to which are willing to direct their energies towards the attainment of the objectives of the organization.

The performance of the staff is as a result of the ability or skills of the workers to use this ability or skills in the actual performance of the job and the motivation they receive to use this ability or skills in the actual performance of the job. The researcher is interested in the personnel management problem and how it affects the performance of secondary school teachers in Ankpa Local Government Area of Kogi State.

The staff has suffered from poor motivation which has contributed to poor out-put in the educational system. Apart from the problem of retention of staff and irregular payment of staff salaries: non-implementation of promotions, there is illegal deductions of staff salaries by the post primary school management board the sate universal basic education board and by the education secretaries and the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) officials.

Besides, officials use loan schemes to exploit the staff all staff are forced into taking loans where shy lock interests are charges so much that some teachers end up having no take home salaries, school supervisors and monitoring officers have abandoned their primary assignments to witch-hunt teachers. All these could affect teacher’s performance.

Moreover, the teacher’s remunerations such as leave grants, rents, subsidy, disturbance allowances and transport have since been subjected to lottery and negotiation between the state education Board and officials of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT). Incremental steps for teachers are sometimes stopped and those promoted have been denied their promotion arrears. The inability of personnel managers and the employers to rectify this problem has frustrated the hope of teachers.

Another big problem facing the teachers is the refusal of government to implement teachers salary scale (TSS). As a result of this, students are forced with consequences of this anomaly, and as a result, personnel managers and employers should employ a useful strategy to improve the staff performance, productivity and attainment of educational goals.

Personnel management generally requires the creation and maintenance of an environment which individuals work together in groups towards the accomplishment of a common objective.

Achievement can also be realized when the manager is aware of what motivates his staff. It is against the background of the above that the researcher is conceived to determine it lack of training and retraining, salary, personnel relationship and leadership style affect the performance of teachers in secondary school in Ankpa Local Government Area of Kogi State.