Abstract
The construction sector faces fierce competition in today’s growing competitive environment. The South African construction industry is labour-intensive, like any other global construction industry. Employees are characterized as the most challenging resource for an organisation to manage. Moreover, their performance is the key to organisational success, as they create a competitive advantage for most organisations. Organisations are trying to find ways to attain the highest possible levels of employee performance. The importance of employees and their performance in an organisation can never be over emphasized; the consequences of poor employee performance might be detrimental. Despite the South African government emphasizing the transformation of the construction sector, it is still characterized by poor productivity and employee performance in construction. Construction management is used as a tool meant to strategically improve the efficiency of construction employees and the overall performance of the construction project. The data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. The targeted respondents, who are construction industry professionals, were given hardcopy survey questions and Google Forms to complete, while the secondary data were gathered through a literature review. Only 153 valid data were obtained from the 200 distributed questionnaires utilized for the study. This study gives a comprehensive understanding of employee performance, including the causes of poor employee performance, the effects of employee turnover on employee performance, ways to enhance employee performance and the measures to be taken to improve employee performance. The study shows the importance of employee performance and how employees are the backbone of any construction project and organisational success. The study highlighted the importance of retaining employees and the negative and positive effects of employee turnover on employee performance. The study further revealed how poor employee performance affects the performance of the organisation and the overall performance and the morale of individual employees. The importance of good managerial skills and motivating employees towards their performance is also detailed in this study. Recognition, compensation, incentives, training, feedback, clear lines of communication, supervision, and monitoring on-site throughout the project are also detailed in this study.
Keywords: Employee, Employee performance, Employee turnover.