Unrealistic Goal Setting within the West African Financial Services Sector

Abstract

The regular revisions and increments in minimum capital requirements for financial institutions have heightened competition within the financial industries in both Ghana and Nigeria. This has resulted in the extensive use of goal-setting via the individual performance-related pay (IPRP) system to motivate superior employee performance and drive aggressive deposit mobilization in order to maximize profit. Individual performance related pay (IPRP) is an employee reward scheme which results in periodic pay rises that are incorporated into basic wages or salary earned and which result from appraisals of individual employee performance and individual value to the organization (Armstrong, 2010; Maycock &Puplampu, 2014). This preliminary study critically examined the experiences and perspectives of employees around goal-setting within the Individual Performance-Related Pay System in the financial services sector in Ghana and Nigeria; using publicly available data (secondary data)to initiate further research. Thematic and Sentiment analysis (Braun &Clark, 2006; Peter, 2002) of secondary data gathered via peer-reviewed academic journals, blogs, tweet reviews, news articles and other social media highlighted a major theme relating to ‘the setting of unrealistic targets/goals which encouraged unethical behaviour among employees'. Three sub-themes are identified further and discussed in relation to this key theme. The negative implications of these findings for organizational image or brand, competitive advantage, employee well-being and the long-term productivity of both these financial services institutions and the employees who work there are identified and some recommendations are proposed.