Workplace Environment and Employees Performance in the Public Sector: A Case of Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

Public segment is the part of economy of a Nation that is controlled by the state. It provides a range of government services e.g. healthcare, education, agriculture, water, tourism etc. The workplace environment is important as it surrounds the conditions in which employees operates in making them satisfied at the workplace and therefore, more productive. A Case study was carried out at the Ministry of Lands and Housing. This study concentrated on four variables; office design, social support, job characteristics, employee health and safety as well as job incentives in relations to employee performance. The target population was 950 employees working at the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development head office in Nairobi. Stratified sample procedure was used to split the populace into different divisions to pull a random prearranged amount of components. Researcher used simple random sample to select 95 respondents. Primary research data was composed from staff working in the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development using an assessment that was self-conducted by the analyst to reduce disparity in data gathering processes and ensure uniformity. Secondary data was sourced from publications, journals, articles and the internet. The collected data was processed and descriptively analyzed using percentages, frequencies, mean and standard error. Inferable statistics thus regression also carried out. A Statistical Package Social Sciences aided the data analysis computer and the results were obtainable by means of tables and diagrams. From the investigation, there was a relationship among office design and employee performance as shown by the increase in employee performance for a unit change in office design. There is strong connection amid social provision and worker presentation. Findings shows a component increases social care factors leads to improvement in employee performance. From the analysis, the job security and job requirements in their organization to a very large extent affect job performance respectively. According to regression model, a unit improvement in employee health and safety would lead to increase on employee performance. On workplace incentives, majority of the respondents strongly agreed that performance recognition can improve their job performance. As workplace incentives improves, the employee performance also improves. Conclusion of the study, subsequent recommendations to be made. Social support factors are important aspects of employee performance and the study recommend that the management keep abreast of the existing relationship in the organization to ensure health relationships are maintained between coworkers and supervisors. Job characteristics affect employee performance and therefore the study concludes that every job should be well designed, job requirements must be well stipulated to ensure personnel know there expectation from every duty. On employee wellbeing, findings endorse soundness of the employees to be accountability of both the management and employees. On workplace incentives, the study recommends that the management should offer both monetary and non-monetary incentives towards improving employee job presentation. Study recommends for various methods of financial compensation such as performance based pay, bonuses and shares allocation.