Academic Leaders’ Perspectives on Job Performance Management at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University

Due to the rapid developments in the field of higher education and increased competitiveness, there is a need to assess and evaluate the performance of the personnel including the academic staff like faculty, teaching assistants and research staff. This research identifies the challenges faced by academic leaders in managing the job performance of faculty members at Prince Sattam Abdulaziz University (PSAU) in three stages of performance management system (planning-reviewing-evaluation) and the degree of differences in the challenges in the variables of academic leaders’ gender, academic rank and job title. The study adopted a descriptive survey method and a questionnaire tool on a study sample of 67 department heads and Deans in various faculties at PSAU, Saudi Arabia. The results showed that the most significant challenges in managing job performance are in the evaluation stage, followed by the review stage and finally the planning stage. There were no statistically significant differences among the responses of the study sample due to the variable of gender and academic rank, while there were statistically significant differences among the respondents according to job title. This research also recommends to link job performance with incentives and rewards to boost employees’ motivation, to evaluate faculty members’ performance in additional tasks of quality and development, scientific research, and community service.