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The Effect Of Health And Safety On Employee’s Productivity
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Health
and safety is an important aspect of any organization requiring
adequate attention. “The practise of occupational health enjoyed a boost
after the second world war, when most European countries embarked on an
industrialization drive and in the process were confronted with the
ills of industries†(Clarke, 2004).
Since then, various discipline
embodied in occupational medicine, nursing, hygiene, and safety have
evolved to various extent in different countries. Other discipline with
strong links to occupational health including occupational health and
occupational aspects of ergonomics, psychology, toxicology, and more
recently industrial relation, have evolved alongside and are now
accepted as disciplines closely related to occupational health and
safety.
The major objective of every organisation is maximising
profit at the minimum cost and one of the ways in which this can be
achieved, is by increasing productivity. Every organisation has an
obligation to utilise properly the factors of production in order to
acquire organisation productivity and growth.
Among the various factors of production, labour has been noted the most unique.
This
is because, it has a mind to think, to resist and therefore to take
actions which may be in favour of the organization, and as such the
organisation has a great role to play in ensuring that the labour force
is properly catered for.
Accidents in organisation are inevitable
occurrence. Some of these are fatal, and could result into temporary or
permanent disability. The cost these accidents is of great detriment to
the organisation. Therefore, when an organization takes time and effort
in looking into health hazards and accident in its environment, it could
result in employee job satisfaction, and a satisfied employee is a
productive employee.
In many industries, the importance of employee’s
health is played down. This is often illustrated by the delegation of
employee’s safety and health as an additional responsibility to cover
burdened professionals specialised in other discipline rather creating
full time position for employee’s safety and health specialist (Clark
2004). At other times, workers and workers union often do not appreciate
the extent that could arise from poor employees safety and health
conditions and therefore spend their energies fighting for remuneration
investing much less effort into work and improved occupation. In the
same vein, industries have very little in supporting employees health
and safety services and research.
To have a greater knowledge on employee’s health and safety, it would be required to distinguish between the two parties:
Safety
is mainly concerned with the prevention aspect of diseases or accident,
the aim being to ensure that any accident or diseases does not occur
due to ignorance or inability of the employers or employees to forestall
such occurrences.
While employees health on the other hand, ensures
that the outbreak of any diseases occurrence is curtailed and adequately
handled “this is what influences organizations in embarking on safety
and health programme for their employees through operations of medical
schemesâ€. (Hienneman 1983)
“The price of not paying attention to
employees health is injurious, the accident, diseases, lost work time,
death etc have multiplying effects on the fortunes of the organizationâ€
(Esuyi 2002). Particularly, the gross is born by the workers as his/her
productivity begins to dwindle. It is thus the aim of this research to
navigate into the depth of employee’s health and safety and to determine
its impact on workers’ productivity.
This study focuses on
“employee’s health workers’ productivity†productivity can simply be
defined as the relationship between the output generated and by a
production or service system and the input provided to create this
output. Industrial accident and diseases lead to loss of working days,
which could mean decrease in productivity.
Health and safety of
employees is therefore an important issue which if studied carefully and
thoroughly, could be of great benefit to the organisation as well as
the nation at large. Thus, the improvement of health and safety measures
could yield the best result in terms of productivity and general
development of the nation.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM.
A
popular maxim exist that will be difficult to refute, “HEALTH IS
WEALTHâ€. In the light of their maxim, it is believed that the good
health of workers will invariably results to improved workers
productivity.
It is in this context that the intention here would be
to find out how health and safety management operates its importance and
its actual practise in organisation using WAPCO PLC. The actual problem
lies between the stated importance and the actual practice of health
and safety. The problem of inadequate employee’s health and safety
measures in organisation is an issue which has been in industry for
long. Effort has been made in both developed and developing countries to
curb down this problem, by frequently bringing out act and laws to
protect the employees from physical, mental and psychological health
hazards in the organization.
The developed countries have sort
various ways of reducing this problem because they are aware of the
cost, the developing countries till today are still fighting this
problem. This issue of employees’ health and safety is a problem
because, health and safety hazard are real and potential danger which
can cause accident or ill health at work, and can directly or indirectly
affect the workers, family, organization, and the nation. This may be
hidden as noise, dust, chemical poisoning, or can be caused by natural
factor such as climate. All these hazards, in which ever form it comes
have serious implications on health and safety of workers and the
existence of this problem could be of great detriment to the community
and nation at large. For this reason, solution of this problem would
without doubt lead to solution of many other problems. This can be done
through a concerted approach by employer, the government, and the
workers whose overall effort can make major improvement towards making
our work places healthy and safe.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The title on this research work is “the effect of health and safety on employee’s productivity using Cadbury Nigeria Plc as a case study. The main aim is to make research if indeed health and safety measures can be regarded as a major contributor to the growth and development of any organization. The research work is also serves as a means to identify the variables that are controllable by management which to certain degree have a direct impact on the performance.The sources of data ... Continue reading---
