This empirical study explores academic staff’s feedback on performance appraisal exercises and consequences on job satisfaction at an Open and Distance Learning (ODL) university. Today, amidst the competitive landscape of higher education, performance appraisals play a critical role in shaping employees’ job satisfaction and organisational effectiveness, particularly within private universities and colleges. This is a descriptive study leveraging a quantitative research design. A structured questionnaire was distributed via Google Forms to 88 academic and only 54 responding. The aims is to capture insights into their perceptions and satisfaction levels on the two respective constructs. A purposive sampling technique was deployed in this study. The composite reliability for the two constructs (performance appraisal and job satisfaction) surpassed 0.7; 0.954 and 0.943 respectively. The Cronbach's alpha values for both constructs were also greater than 0.7; 0.944 “performance appraisal” and 0.937 “job satisfaction”. The findings demonstrate that the academic staffs nearly have a balanced score between agreement and disagreement with the performance appraisal exercise but are slightly more negative towards it, with 51.8% (28) expressing disagreement and 48.1% (26) agree. Consequently, 57.4% (31) of participants reported a low level of job satisfaction. This reflects broader concerns about the fairness and accuracy of the appraisal exercise and its impact on job satisfaction. Furthermore, a significant proportion of the academic staff disagreed with the notion that current appraisal practices effectively promote job satisfaction. Thus, critical measures need to be taken to improve the performance appraisal exercise to ensure they are both fair and transparent, fostering a more satisfied and motivated academic staffs. In term of demographic factors such as gender and years of employment, the study also sheds light on varying perceptions among male and female groups. Overall, the study contributes to the ongoing discourse on optimising performance appraisal exercise within ODL settings to better meet the needs and expectations of academic staffs. Further research should explore longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of revised performance appraisal systems and investigate how demographic factors such as age and years of service influence perceptions of fairness and job satisfaction.
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