Professional Development and Employee Productivity in Quoted Foods and Beverages Manufacturing Companies in South-South Nigeria

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between professional development and employee productivity of quoted foods and beverages manufacturing companies in south-south Nigeria. The study adopts a cross-sectional survey research design, while its theoretical framework was built on the adaptive learning Theory. The population of the study comprises of one thousand nine hundred and sixteen (1,916) employees, with a sample size of (330) three hundred and thirty employees from the 14 quoted foods and beverages manufacturing companies in south-south Nigeria which was sourced from the human resource department in each company using Taro Yamen’s formula to determine the sample size. Data were elicited through questionnaire administration. The Cronbach Alpha Reliability was used in accessing the reliability of the instrument adopted in the study and all the values were above the bench mark of 0.7. Also, the Spearman Rank Order Coefficient technique was used to access the relationship between study variables and to test the stated hypothesis with the use of statistical package for social science (SPSS Vision 26.0) software. Empirical findings showed that there is a strong positive and significant relationship between professional development and the measures of employee productivity (timeliness, quantity output and quality service) of the quoted foods and beverages manufacturing companies in south-south Nigeria. The study therefore, recommends that human resources managers in the organizations notably the foods and beverages manufacturing industry should utilize decision making and critical thinking to improve employee productivity in the organizations. That orientation be improved and conducted in such a manner to progress employee productivity as it is an opportunity to boost employee capabilities, add to their techniques and improve their skills.