The Effect of Reward and Punishment on Employee Performance at the Harbor Master and Port Authority Office Class IV Bengkalis

Abstract

Improving employee performance is essential for strengthening public service delivery, and this concern underlies the present research at Kantor Kesyahbandaran dan Otoritas Pelabuhan Kelas IV Bengkalis. Although the institution already applies a system of reward and punishment intended to raise employee performance, whether this system actually works as intended had not yet been tested empirically. Accordingly, this research set out to measure how Reward and Punishment influence employee performance, both jointly and on their own. A quantitative design built around multiple linear regression was applied, with data processed in SPSS. Because the workforce was small, every one of the 32 employees was included as a respondent through saturated sampling. Beyond regression, the analysis covered correlation testing, the coefficient of determination, and hypothesis testing through the F-test and t-test. Findings indicate that Reward correlates strongly with performance (r = 0.675), whereas Punishment shows a more moderate association (r = 0.487); combined, the two predictors account for 61.8% of the variance in performance (Adjusted R² = 0.618). Simultaneous testing confirms that Reward and Punishment together exert a significant positive influence on performance, and this pattern holds when each variable is examined separately as well. On this basis, applying Reward and Punishment in a fair, consistent, and objective manner appears capable of raising employee performance and, in turn, strengthening the quality of public service the institution provides.