Effects Of Rewards Strategies On Employee Performance Of Farm Concern International, Kenya

ABSTRACT

The ability to offer fair reward is vital to management if they are to attract, motivate and retain their good employee performance. Farm Concern International (FCI) has been operating different reward system to its employees in different programmes. This has resulted in low overall performance. In order to increase overall performance, FCI management adopted a new strategy of a central reward system where employees were rewarded uniformly. However, the effect of this reward strategy on employee performance has not yet been documented. Therefore, the study’s general goal was to identify the effects of rewards strategies on the performance of employees in FCI. In particular, it sought to establish the effects of monetary rewards, non-monetary rewards, promotion schemes and recognition on employee performance in the organization. The study was guided by three theories namely; the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Expectancy and Equity Theory. The researcher targeted FCI employees who are categorized as senior staff, middle-level staff and the support staff. Case study design was adopted for the study that also targeted 152 employees of FCI. The census technique was used due to the small study population. The data was collected using pretested questionnaires that contained both open ended and closed ended items. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics aided by Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 22.0. The findings revealed that, first, most employees were not content with their pay and also there was uncertainty on whether the current monetary rewards in the firm led to improved employee performance. Second, it was revealed that the non-monetary rewards being employed in the firm were favorably received and were spurring employee performance. It was also established that the promotion schemes in the firm were instrumental in improving employee performance. Lastly, it was established that recognition strategies as currently practiced in the firm were having a considerable outcome on employee performance. The study recommends that management should adopt performance-based pay, by compensating employees based on their productivity and job performance which is expected to motivate employees more and to align their behaviour towards improving performance and output. The study also recommends that training should be offered to employees to transfer information from the experts to the employees so as to enhance knowledge, attitudes and/or skills, which as a result would enable the employee to better perform a current task or job.