Establishing employees perception on occupational health and safety concerns at East African Portland cement

Abstract

Occupational health and safety is a cross-cutting disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. Though many companies have come up with policies to address the occupational and health issues; the increased and rapid industrialization have continued to cause occupational accidents and occupational diseases. The objective of this study was to establish employees perception on occupational health and safety at Eapcc, further determine the extent to which workers had complied with the OSHA 2007 stipulations of expected health issues and the benefits accrued thereof. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population was 800 EAPPC employees where stratified sampling technique was used to select a sample of 10% from each stratum to get a sample of 80 respondents. The study used a questionnaire with both structured and unstructured questions to collect primary data. Before the actual data collection, a pilot study was carried out to ensure that the data was reliable and valid. The data was analyzed through both descriptive and inferential statistics through aid of the SPSS software. The analyzed data was reported using frequency tables and graphs. The study showed that workers were aware occupational health and safety concerns which included: exposure to dust, high temperatures, noisy environment and exposure to allergic industrial substance. The regression results show that there was significant relationship between occupation health concerns and employees performance (r = -0.925, p=0.001) and a negative but significant relationship between occupational safety concerns and performance of employees (r= - 0.777, P=0.002). The study concludes that those perceptions in turn appear to influence employee’s decision that relate to at-risk behaviors and decision on the job. The study recommends that management of EAPCC should focus on how to best leverage theses key factors to more positively impact injury rates.