INFLUENCE OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ON EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY IN THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR IN KENYA

ESTHER W. NJIHIA

Abstract


It is clear that the purpose of OSH is to create a safe working environment and employees are protected from workplace accidents or from adverse events. This is attributed to the factors that drive job satisfaction, such as supporting employment condition in which employees care about good working environment for personal comfort and to ease their task because they prefer to work in the physical environment that is not dangerous or troublesome. A good implementation of OSH would foster a sense of security and comfort in the heart of the employee. With the creation of a sense of security and comfort, these in turn would make employees in the better position to avoid work accidents and would not hinder their performance. Thus, the creation of a sense of security and comfort in the workplace would also enable improvement of employee’s performance. A positive OSH achievement would create a sense of security that could improve performance, because if employees do not feel safe whilst working, they may not do their job well. The purpose of this research was to assess influence of OSH on employee productivity in Kenya. It was therefore, guided by Employee Wellness and Employee Safety as independent variables and Employee productivity as the dependent variable. The study adopted a descriptive research design. Questionnaires were used to collect quantitative data from the employees, while in-depth schedules were used to obtain qualitative data from the respondents. Data from questionnaires was analyzed by both descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of SPSS version 24 and inferential statistics such as Pearson correlation coefficient was used to compute the data, while qualitative data was analyzed thematically through content analysis technique.  A multiple regression model was fitted to determine whether independent variables affected the dependent variable Employee Productivity. As a result, it examined whether the multiple regression equation could be used to explain the nature of the relationship that existed between the independent variables and the dependent variable. 

Keywords: Employee Wellness, Employee Safety, Employee Productivity


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.61426/sjbcm.v4i4.574

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