Organisational reward system as a tool in enhancing employee performance: a study of some selected public higher education institutions in Enugu State

Abstract

One of the strategies that many organisations have used to enhance their employees' morale, thereby increasing productvity is applying rewards. The most common rewards are monetary and non-monetary rewards. This study, therefore, sort to examine the effect of reward system on employee performance in selected public higher education institutions in Enugu state, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design and survey method of data collection. The target population of the study was the staff of Enugu State College of Education (Technical), Institute of Management and Technology, and Enugu State University of Science and Technology.The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire administered to 384 respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted using frequencies and Linear Regression respectively. The result indicates that monetarty incentives (fringe benefits, promotions, salary, and pension scheme) and non-monetary incentives (training and development opportunities, employee recognition, good working conditions and flexibility of working hours) have significant effect on employees’ performance in the Nigerian public higher education institutions. The study, therefore, recommends that management of these institutions should improve on the provision of both monetary and non-monetary incentives because if well planned and implemented as organizational culture would have long-term positive effects on the performance of the employees