Occupational Safety and Health Training and Performance of Cement Manufacturing Firms in Kenya

Abstract

This study sought to find establish the influence of occupational safety and health (OSH) training on the Performance of Cement Manufacturing Firms in Kenya. The cement industry in Kenya plays a crucial role in the ever-growing building and construction industry. These firms are incurring huge costs due to employee absenteeism and compensation caused by occupational accidents which are an unexpected and unintentional series of events leading to a physical injury of a person at the work place. It may be caused by lifting, fatigue, dehydration, poor lighting, etc. It is against this background that the study sought to fill the existing gaps by examining how occupational safety and health (OSH) training influence the performance of manufacturing firms in the cement sub-sector in Kenya. The study also sought to establish the moderating effect of management support on the relationship between occupational safety and health training and Performance of Cement Manufacturing firms. A Conceptual framework was drawn to depict how the conceptualized independent variables relate to the dependent variable. The study was supported by Occupational Safety and Health training model, Domino safety Theory, Epidemiological Theory, Human Factor Theory and Expectancy Theory. A descriptive research design was adopted since it explains the what, when and where of the phenomenon. The unit of observation was all the cement manufacturing firms while the unit of analysis was the employees working in the firms in Marketing and Production departments randomly picked. Both open and close ended questionnaires were used to collect data from the respondents. The study adopted a multi-stage sampling technique to select a sample from the six cement manufacturing firms in Kenya. In order to test for data integrity, Normality test, Multicollinearity, Heteroscedasticity and Hypothesis tests were carried out. In order to test for Strength and direction of the relationship between independent and dependent variables, Pearson correlation was carried out. A pilot study was conducted to test the reliability and validity of the data collection instrument. To test the influence of the conceptualized independent variables on the dependent variable, regression analysis was carried out. The study established that OSH training on Hazard Identification, OSH training on Occupational Accidents, OSH Training on Hazard Prevention and Employee Participation in OSH training, significantly influence performance of cement manufacturing firms in Kenya. It further established that management support moderates the relationship between the predictor variables and outcome variables. The study concluded that in order to address the issue of Occupational Accidents, Hazard Identification, Hazard Prevention and Employee Participation, there was considerable need to provide training on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) training among employees. The study recommends that there is need for organizations through their management to provide adequate and frequent training on safety and health through which they ought to save on operational costs as well as instilling better productivity among their employees thus maximizing on performance.