Abstract:

An efficient employee is considered as a valuable asset in any organization, but measuring employee efficiency is not an easy task. This study aims to measure and compare staff efficiency in Kuwaiti banks using the financial performance of the bank as an efficiency proxy. Return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) are set as dependent variables, and total assets per employee, cost per employee, revenue per employee, number of staff per branch, and total employees’ cost to total revenues are set as independent variables. Using panel OLS regression on the data of 10 Kuwaiti banks that are listed at Kuwait stock exchange (KSE) over the period 2010-2018, results showed that total assets per employee, cost per employee, revenue per employee all had a significant direct relationship with both ROA and ROE and only total employees’ cost to total revenues showed a significant inverse relationship with the financial performance of the banks. The number of staff per branch was the only variable that had no relation with both ROA and ROE. The model showed that the National bank of Kuwait had the most efficient employees’ when it comes to ROA, while Ahli United bank had the most efficient employees’ when ROE was used to measure staff efficiency. In both cases, ROA and ROE, Warba bank had the least efficient staff among all banks under study.