Employee Rewards and Its Performance Implication: A South Eastern Nigeria Experience

The seeming unending controversy between employers and employees in the workplace which have most often led to some sort of faceoff between both parties necessitated this study which looked at employee rewards and how it impacts on job performance of civil servants in South East of Nigeria. The work was anchored on Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 26,741 civil servants from South Eastern States of Nigeria. A sample size of 5136 was arrived at through the application of Borg and Gall method. Data were collected using structured questionnaire and were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient while hypotheses were tested at 0.05 (5%) significance level. The study revealed that there was a statistical significant relationship between employee recognition and performance in civil service in South East of Nigeria (r = .819, p-value < 0.05) and that there was a statistical significant relationship between staff development and employee performance in civil service in South East of Nigeria (r = .586, p-value < 0.05). Sequel to this, it was concluded that reward systems has significant performance implication for civil servants. Following this, it was recommended among other things that it is the duty of government to fashion out best methods of recognizing employees who distinguish themselves while carrying out their assigned tasks and that government needs to always identify training needs of the workers through effective performance appraisal and staff development practices.