Effect of rewards on employee performance in selected micro and small enterprises in Hohoe, Volta Region, Ghana.
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Date
2018-11
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KNUST
Abstract
Rewards establish a balance between employee’s contribution to the business and the business’s contribution to employees. Academics and human resource practitioners agree that rewards are instruments employers use to attract, retain, and stimulate appropriate outputs from employees. Extant research on rewards has focused on large and public enterprises with little focus on micro and small enterprises (MSEs). However, these large and public enterprises have proven incapable of providing employment for the teeming graduates; hence an overwhelming majority of employees in Ghana work in MSEs. This research complements existing knowledge on employee rewards by primarily focusing on MSEs. The qualitative phenomenological design, which entails conducting interviews as research tool, was employed to evaluate the existing reward practices; the procedures for rewarding employees; and the nexus between rewards and employee performance in selected MSEs in Hohoe. This research revealed that rewards in MSEs are not only different from large and public enterprises; but also deficient. The rewards were simplistic and limited to the payment of salaries with little or no emphasis on non-monetary rewards. As a result, most employees believed they deserved more than they were offered and therefore had no plans of maintaining the present work. Employers were found to discriminate in rewarding employees since the rewards were arbitrarily determined without recourse to any law, regulation, or policy. The nexus between rewards and performance of employees was not direct. Factors other than rewards such as unemployment and economic situation, humanitarian considerations, desire to gain work experience, and so on attributed to employees’ performances. Employees demanded reward parity with counterparts in large and public enterprises. This study recommends an improvement in the working conditions of workers in MSEs in line with existing regulatory frameworks. It further suggests an enactment of unique regulations to guide the obligations of employers to employees and vice versa in terms of rewards in MSEs.
Description
A Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirements For The Award Of Master Of Philosophy In Sociology.