FACTORS AFFECTING PERFORMANCE OF GOVERNMENT BUDGET OFFICERS OF PUBLIC FINANCE IN KENYA
Ben Mwangi Kihia - Master of Science in Commerce (Finance and Accounting), KCA University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Although the Government of Kenya (GoK) has been undertaking a various public sector reform measures to improve its performance, there has been poor performance of the budget function resulting from the poor performance of the budget officers Over time the Government of Kenya has not been able to enhance budget officer performance by addressing the factors leading to employee satisfaction and this resulted to poor work performance by these officers. The prevailing situation in the public sector is characterised by poor work performance and budgets which are not working. The major problems facing the public sector have been the low motivation of budget officer which this attributes to; work environment, salary and allowances, job security, and individual related factors (IRF). Although studies have been conducted globally, regionally, and locally on employee performance, there is scanty information that explains the performance of Government budget officers’ in Kenya as being influenced by; work environment, salary and allowances, job security, and individual related factors jointly. It is against the status of affairs that the present study was conducted to fill this knowledge gap. The study target population was the82 Government budget officers in Kenya and the study used census where the entire population participated as respondents. Primary data collection method was the administration of a structured questionnaire delivered to the respondents. The collected data was analysed using descriptive statistics. Descriptive data was analysed with assistance of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) ver. 20.0. Inferential analysis was done on the data to estimate a study model using multiple regressions and establish a relationship between independent variables and dependent variable. The study found that; work environment highly affects the employee performance; Salary and allowances highly affects the employee performance; job security highly affect the employee performance and individual related factors moderately affects employee performance. The study recommends that the Government of Kenya should; ensure a conducive work environment for its budget officers to ensure that their; review the salary and allowances of its budget officer to enhance or improve their performance; ensure that the job security of budget officers in Kenya is ensured to influence their performance. The study further recommends that budget officers in Kenya should handle and manage their individual related factors, which might affect their performance. Further studies should be conducted to establish the extent to which the factors; Work environment, salary and incentives, job security, and individual related factors influence the employee performance using quantitative data.