Uganda has witnessed persistent poor employee performance in public organizations since mid 60s, which scholars attribute to the 1966/67 crisis and the political turmoil of the early 70s up to mid 80s. Despite government?s effort to avert the crisis by introducing reforms to improve employee performance, the situation has not improved. The study?s main objective was to investigate whether there is a relationship between performance management practices (decision rights, incentives, performance contracts, organization resources and performance measurement) and employee performance in public organizations in Uganda. The study was conducted at Kampala City Council and the Ministry of Education and Sports. Data was collected from a stratified random sample of 517 participants and from a purposively selected sample of 32 respondents. A 5- point Likert scale questionnaire and three interview guides were used to collect data. The Principal component analysis was used to establish the number of major components which accounted for most of the variance within the performance management practices, government policy and employee performance. The Mann-Whitney test was used to establish the mean difference between the two organizations. Pearson chi-square test was used to establish the relationship between the performance management practices and employee performance. Log-Linear analysis was used to establish the interactive effect among the performance management practices, government policy and employee performance. Qualitative data was analyzed using pragmatic content analysis. The results of the study revealed that the selected performance management practices explained 54% of employee performance while 46% was explained by other factors. Findings also indicated that the Ministry of Education and Sports had better performance management practices than Kampala City Council.