Assess the Effect of Performance-Based Rewards Appraisal Technique on Employee Performance in Public Universities in Kenya

Employees are important assets to organizations and their Performance is paramount. Fair appraisal techniques should be employed to enhance employee Performance. Performance is important for an organization to achieve its objectives and goals. The paper sought to assessthe effect of performance based rewards appraisal technique on employee Performance in public universities in Nakuru county, Kenya. The paperwas anchored on the Expectancy theory which links the requirement for employees to perform as a result of the motivation attained from being rewarded. Thepaperadopted descriptive research design. With a population comprising all the four public universities operating in Nakuru county, Kenya. A total of 1,330 employees were targeted as our respondents. The researcher used Stratified sampling and coefficient of variation Nassiuma formula to get a sample of 201 respondents from the total population. To test validity and reliability of the study, a pilot study was carried out at Kabarak University and Mount Kenya University Nakuru campus. A questionnaire with closed ended questions wasused to collect primary data Questionnaires.The researcher used the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 25. The paper established that the performance based rewards appraisal technique was implemented to a larger extent in the universities according to the mean of 3.8 > 3. The employees were found to perform highly according to the majority of the respondents (44.8 %). The inferential statistics resulted to correlation coefficient r (181) = 0.719, p-value = 0.000 < 0.05, coefficient of regression ???? = 0.132, p-value = 0.000 < 0.05 and Pearson Chi-Square of χ2 (16, N = 181) = 62.028, p = 0.000 < 0.05.This implies that there is a strong positive relationship between Performance-Based Rewards Appraisal Technique and Performance of Employees in public universities that is significant at 5% levels of significant. Different stakeholders in the human resource management function such as government and employer organizations such as Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) need to formulate new policies or amend existing policies and procedures and devise best in class methods of increasing employee Performance from the findings of this study. There is need for the human resource departments to formulate policies on employee rewards since it is a significant influencer of performance.