Automatic Pay Rises for Civil Servants to End by June 2027

Automatic salary progression in Kenya's public service will be phased out by June next year. This follows resolutions adopted at the first National Productivity and Performance Conference held at the Kenya School of Government in Lower Kabete, Nairobi.

The three-day meeting concluded on Friday with an agreement on a major shift in pay policy. All public sector compensation systems shall progressively move from automatic salary and career progression to remuneration tied to productivity and performance.

The change applies to ministries, departments and agencies at both national and county level.

The stated goal is to raise annual labour productivity growth in the public service from its current rate of 1.38 per cent. The target is at least 20 per cent by June 2027, a sharp jump that signals how aggressively the reform is being pitched.

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission has been tasked with leading implementation across government departments.

Parliament, county assemblies and the Head of Public Service were also assigned roles. They are to develop and enact the policy, legislative and administrative frameworks needed to embed productivity into budgeting, planning and service delivery systems by June 2027.

Alongside the pay changes, the conference resolved to overhaul the existing Performance Contracting Framework. Productivity indicators, which currently carry a weighting of just 3 per cent, are to rise to at least 50 per cent by June 2028.

Organisers framed the broader push as an effort to build a more productivity-driven public service. They also pointed to stronger fiscal sustainability and improved citizen satisfaction with government services.

Digital transformation featured prominently in the resolutions as well. The conference called for accelerated business process re-engineering across government departments to cut inefficiencies and improve service delivery.

One resolution commits the government to fully automating and digitising public services and internal operations. The aim is to lift productivity, efficiency, transparency and the overall citizen experience.

President William Ruto, addressing participants at the conference, said the resolutions would be acted on regardless of public criticism. He told attendees he intended to add further reforms of his own.

Ruto said promotions in the public service would now be based strictly on performance rather than tenure. He described it as a shift toward rewarding results and impact instead of time spent at a desk.

He went further, telling the gathering that the public service must restore merit as a central principle. He called on recruitment commissions to hire based on competence, fairness and transparency.

The president linked the reforms to Kenya's broader economic ambitions. He suggested that a more performance-focused public service would help position the country among the world's developed nations.

The resolutions did not specify how affected employees currently on automatic progression tracks will transition into the new system. Nor did they detail the metrics that will define productivity and performance for purposes of pay determination.