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 schemes”. (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 organization” (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 WEALTH”. 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.