The study investigates the effect of workforce ethnic diversity and education background diversity on employee performance in selected universities in Kenya. The objective of the study were to determine the effects of education background diversity on employee performance and to determine the effects of workforce ethnic diversity on employee performance. Social identity theory was used to ground this study. Explanatory research design was adopted, and a survey was conducted on selected Universities in Kenya. Selfadministered questionnaires were distributed to 371 teaching and non-teaching administrators of Universities out of which 305 equal to 82% of the sample size were returned and were used in data analysis. Cronbach alpha was used to test the reliability of the instruments. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and Pearson correlation analysis was done. Regression analysis was done to test the hypotheses and to establish the effect that each variable has on employee performance. The study findings indicate that ethnic diversity (β1= 0.238, ρ<0.05), educational diversity (β2 = 0.048, ρ<0.05) have significant and positive effect on employee performance. This study therefore supports and contributes to the social categorization theory and human resource management literature. The implication is that institutions and firms should consider hiring employees from socially diverse backgrounds to be able to achieve higher employee performance.

Keywords : Workforce Ethnic Diversity, Education Background Diversity, Employee Performance.