ABSTRACT
Employees are life blood of any organization. The degree to which an organization achieves its set objectives depends on how employees are motivated and engaged. Motivated workers tend to be committed and satisfied about their jobs, which translate to higher job performance and consequently improved organizational performance. Financial or monetary rewards such as salary, fringe benefits, bonuses, commission, etc., are not the only way to get employees motivated. There are other ways employees can be motivated with zero financial cost attached. Empirical literature has confirmed that non-financial forms of motivation produce the same or better result than financial forms. It is against this backdrop the study examined the relationship between motivational drives and employee performance in universities in Ogun State. The specific objectives of the study were to examine the relationship of employee performance with achievement, autonomy, career advancement, personal development, recognition and nature of work. The study employed the descriptive survey design and the purpose sampling technique was adopted to select three universities in Ogun State namely Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta; Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye and Crawford University, Igbesa. The population of the study comprised of 4,458 employees. However, after applying the Taro Yamane formula, the sample size of the study consisted of 477 staff. The study made use of primary data through administered questionnaire to obtain data from respondents. Out of 477 questionnaires administered, 378 copies were returned. The descriptive statistics and the Pearson Product moment of correlation were employed for the analysis of data. The major findings of the study are summarized as follows:
Career advancement has the strongest relationship with employee performance, followed by personal growth, recognition, autonomy, achievement and nature of work.
Also Achievement; Career advancement; Personal growth; recognition; autonomy; and nature of work all have significant and positive correlation with performance of employees of selected universities in Ogun State. With the following r factors: Achievement (r=0.900; p<0.05); C areer A dvancement (r=0.939; p<0.05); A utonomy (r=0.921; p<0.05); P ersonal g rowth (r=0.926; p<0.05); R ecognition (r=0.924; p<0.05) and Nature of work (r=0.894; p<0.05)all had strong positive relationship with employee performance in selected universities in Ogun State, Nigeria.