PROPOSAL ON THE EFFECT OF SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ON JOB PERFORMANCE AMONG EMPLOYEES IN SERVICE RELATED INDUSTRIES IN LAGOS STATE

Abstract

Improving performance in organization may be demonstrated by way of intensifying effort towards increasing output level and quality. To accomplish this goal means efforts of employees are required in task performance. Effective execution of such essential employee responsibility, to a great extent, depends on the level of safety in the workplace. Management policy, especially in the developing economies is yet to properly address the issue of employee health and safety. This has resulted in frequent accidents and hazards, leading to high costs in the areas of hospital bills, salaries for hospitalized workers and compensations. Increased labor turnover, absenteeism, strained management-labor relationships, operational inefficiency, and ultimately decreasing performance become noticeable in such organizations. To satisfy workers’ safety needs and motivate them, ceteris paribus, management must maintain effective health and safety program, and be committed to its success in all ramifications.

INTRODUCTION

Safety constitutes one of the essential human needs, as postulated by Abraham Maslow in his theory of needs hierarchy. Feeling safe at work ranks as a very important factor in job satisfaction (Kreitner, 2007). In attempt to satisfy this need certain organizations incorporate into their policy thrusts, guaranteeing workers’ safe work execution under a climate capable of enhancing the physical, mental, and emotional conditions. Organizational policy of this nature is often categorized under health and safety. Under work environment, Hall and Goodale (1986) describe employee health as the absence of illness or disease resulting from the interaction of employee and the work environment. In general term, health means a state of complete physical, emotional, mental, and social ability of an individual to cope with his environment, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (Hippocrate, 1981). Health is the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, promoting physical and mental health, sanitation and personal hygiene, control of infections and organization of health services (Lucas, 2001). On the other hand, safety means freedom from the occurrence or risk of injury or loss (Aswathappa, 2004). He described industrial or employee safety as the protection of workers from the danger of industrial accidents. Safety can as well be referred to as the absence of injuries due to the interaction of the employee and the work environment (Lucas, 2001). In a general perspective, safety means a condition of being safe from undergoing or causing hurt, injuries or loss. Hence, safety policies may encompass activities directed at either reducing or complete removal of hazardous conditions capable of causing bodily injuries. Organizational safety policy, according to Aswathappa (2004), specifies the company’s safety goals and designates the responsibilities and authority for their achievement. According to him, such policy statement must emphatically declare four fundamental points-

(i) the safety of employees and the public:

(ii) safety taking precedence over expediency:

(iii) every effort made to involve all managers, supervisors and employees in the development and implementation of safety procedures:

(iv) safety legislation to be complied with. Organizational health and safety in the context of this paper is concerned with the health and safety of workers, which Annah (2004) described as part and parcel of human security and as a basic human right. According to ILO (2005), organizational health and safety focuses on the development of specific measures and programmes, aimed at protecting employees in the course of performing their duties to maximize productivity and improve the overall organizational performance. Industrial sociologists and management theorists have, for several years, been concerned with how best work activities can be structured in order to produce safe working environment and affirmative employee’s behavior; however, there appears to be no agreement among scholars of these disciplines. For example, Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management sought to resolve these problems from managerial perspectives and argued that man is naturally lazy. Many Nations of the world have striven to industrialize while others are pushing to get there because of the immense benefits accruable from industrialization. The process of industrialization in a nutshell describes a transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society; a shift from a consumer nation to a producer nation; and a movement from dependence on crude methods of manufacturing of cutting edge technology and jet-age ideas. There are certain prerequisites for any country to industrialize successfully.

CONCEPT OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

Occupational health and safety is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. The goal of all occupational health and safety programs is to foster a safe work environment (Amazon, 2006). Occupational health deals with ill-health arising from working conditions/or environment that slowly accumulate to lead to deterioration of the workers health. However occupational safety is concerned with prevention of accidents and minimizing the aspect of work environment that has the potential of causing immediate violent harm to employees (Armstrong, 2012). According Mejia (2010) asserts that occupational safety and health is abroad area which includes both physical and emotional well-being. Effectively managing workplace safety and health requires far more than reducing the number of job related accidents and injuries. Health and safety is a positive concept that includes social and personal resources as well as physical capabilities (Nutbeam, 1990). It has been conceptualized as the ability to have and to reach goals, meet personal needs and cope with everyday life (Raphael, Brown, Renwick & Rootman, 1997). The concept of accident proneness is now largely discredited; safety and health programs 5 concentrate as far as possible on ensuring that the employee is suitable for the job and that work is conducted in a safe environment (Graham and Bennet, 1995). Jackson et.al. (2009) states that the term occupational safety and health refers to the physiological – physical and psychological conditions of a workplace that result from work environment provided by the organization. Physiological-physical conditions include diseases and accidents such as actual loss of life, repetitive motion injuries, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome. Psychological conditions encompass symptoms of poor mental health and job burnout, including apathy, emotional exhaustion, withdrawal, confusion about roles and duties, mistrust of others, in attentiveness, irritability and a tendency to become distraught over trifles. These conditions often are responses to workplace stress and a low quality of work life

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH PROGRAMS

Occupational safety and health programs involve practices or activities that are undertaken by the organization in reducing unsafe conditions and unsafe acts in the workplace. Reducing unsafe conditions is always an employer’s first line of defense in accident prevention (Hopkin, 2010). He further observe that in designing safe and healthy environments, employers need to pay special attention to vulnerable workers in the workplace either due to lack of education, ill-fitting personal protective equipment, physical limitations or cultural reasons. The achievement of a healthy and safe place of work and the elimination of maximum extent of possible hazards to health and safety is the responsibility of everyone employed in an organization as well as those working under contract. The occupational safety and health programs are designed to minimize the impact of work related illnesses and accidents arising 6 from the work (Armstrong, 2012). Designing and implementing intervention programs is more challenging to organizations/or companies with none operations around the world because it is more difficult to monitor progress. Related to this challenge and responsibility of Human resource professionals and organizations in managing the conditions resulting from major diseases epidemics and major disasters. Because the magnitude of the impact of diseases and disasters, organizations must be proactive in managing occurrence (Stewart and McGoldrick, 1996). On the other hand Dessler (2008) argues that healthy and safe working environment does not just happen it has to be created. The organizations with the best reputation for safety have developed well planned, thorough health and safety programs. Concern for safety should begin at the highest level within the organization, manager and then supervisor. If an organization takes effective safety and health measures, fewer of its employees will have short or long term illeffects as a result of employed at that organization. Nzuve (2009) believe that organizations depend on employees as working partners and fellow members of the organization community. The achievement of a healthy and safe place of work and elimination of maximum extent of possible hazards in an organization as well as those working there under contract. By reducing the rates and severity of occupational accidents, diseases, workplace violence, stress related illness, and improving the quality of work for their employees, organizations become significantly effective. Organizations invest in health and safety programs in part of humanitarian reasons but also out of concern of controlling costs of many kinds, extending from times Occupational Safety and Health Act for non-compliance to health insurance premiums, to payments for non-productive.

EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

Employee Performance is the record of result which is gained from the function of certain work or certain activities in certain period of time. It is a set of behaviours that are relevant to the goals of the organization or the organizational unit in which a person works (Bernandin & Russell, 2009). Armstrong (2010) state that employee performance is a process for establishing a shared workforce understanding about what is to be achieved at an organization level. It is about aligning the organizational objectives with the employees’ agreed measures, skills, competency requirements, development plans and the delivery of results. Many business organizations in this era of global competition are trying to create a high performance work culture which is incorporated of both business and corporate strategies in order to develop individual’s contribution to the overall success of the organization. In recent years, many organizations are trying to create a ‘performance culture’, which is incorporated of several strategies in order to develop individuals’ contribution to the overall success of the organization. The human resource department commonly has the responsibility for ensuring the health and safety of employees is 8 taken care of hence high performance output (Armstrong, 2007; Boxal and Purcell, 2008; Fletcher and Williams, 1996). Armstrong (2012) assert, the aim of managers is to establish a high performance culture in which individuals and team takes responsibility for the continuous improvement of business process and for their own skills and contributions within a framework provided effective leadership. Most of the world’s largest corporations are realizing that business and work activities must no longer ignore safety and health concerns. According to (Gilley et.al, 2003) argues that what is required is an organization wide approach to performance improvement with workplace health and safety as critical aspects of employee performance. The desire for improved workers productivity cannot be approached in a vacuum. The benefits accrue from keeping the workplace safe must not exceed the costs incurred for occupational safety and health programs. According to (Pritchard, 1990) states that productivity improvement is important for the individual organization and to improve productivity it is important to measure it. Effective managers and supervisors realize that they must take an active and positive role in employee performance to ensure that goals are met. Managing employee performance is one way of empowering employees. To give the organization and its employees the opportunity to achieve high performance, managers and employees must understand their workplace safety thoroughly, in terms of both what they are doing and how they are supposed to do it. Effective managers create antecedent that achieve two purposes: they facilitate performance and stimulate employees for performance (Zeithmal, 2002). Employee performance reviews ensure that the workers are focused on their jobs and work toward reaching the company’s overall goals and satisfying the organization’s mission statement (Aldag, 2004).

THEORETICAL REVIEW

In the School of Human Relation, one of the most prominent pioneers is Elton Mayo who is regarded as the founder of the human relations movement. Elton Mayo’s management style was a departure from that of Taylor who believes that man was an economic animal and would respond to financial incentives. Nwachukwu, (1992:26), opines that Elton Mayo while at the Harvard University conducted series of studies at the Hawthorne Plant at the Western Electric Company. The purpose of these studies was to determine the effect of illumination on employees productivity. The intensity of the lighting was varied from fairly dark to bright to very bright from 24 to 46 to 70 foot candles. The lighting in the control group remained the same. In each instance, the productivity of the workers increased, showing no relationship between the lighting and output. Instead of productivity going down when the intensity of the lighting was reduced, it went up. The researcher was surprised and believed that something other than illumination was responsible for the change in the output. The same experiment was tried with rest periods. There was no decline in productivity when the rest period was reduced, instead, productivity went up .To determine the cause of the rise in productivity, there was a need to return to the basic condition of the factory before the experiments. Rest period was removed, lighting went back to original condition and employees were required to work for 48 hours a week.

EMPIRICAL REVIEW

Nwachukwu, (1992:27) in a study of a Scotish Manager in a textile industry believes that employees should be seen as “vital machines.’ He compared workers to machines by pointing out that if workers are looked after as machines are by being kept in a state of good repair, greased and cleaned, the effort expended in caring for them would be paid off by increased productivity. He believed that if this was true of inanimate machines”, it had to be true of “vital machines.” 13 Cooper, (2006:18) carried out a research in a Nicked Refinery within 93 week periods with 275 employees. The research focused on managerial commitment behaviours and employee safety behaviours. The result showed that safety behaviour improved by 40%, while lost time injuries reduced by 82.26% in the first year, and it reduced to zero percent in the second year. Also minor injuries were reduced by 35% during the period.This showed that managerial commitment impacted 35% on the employees safety behaviour. The timing and the magnitude of the impact suggests that management must continually demonstrate their commitment to safety health and environment. Deo, (2005:16) after an explosion at BP’s Texas City Refinery, the investigation revealed that the company had put much emphasis on personal safety thereby ignoring the safety of their processes. Effective safety management means that organizations need to ensure they are looking at all the risks within the organization as a single system, rather than having multiple or competing safety management system. He opines that if safety is not seen holistically, it can interfere with the prioritization of improvement or even result in safety issues being missed. He concluded that the antidote to such mistake is the proper evaluation of all risks, a key aspect of an effective safety management system. Brace, (1991) carried a review on the foundation of safety management, which states that safety is a matter of mutual concern and respect for yourself, your fellow worker, and the equipment you will be using.

A common phenomenon of this study and previous research findings is that human errors (intentional and unintentional) and system failures are fundamental to the occurrence of accidents. These human errors unsafe acts / conditions coupled with managerial design failures create room for the occurrence of accidents Brace, (1991) state that your eyes are too valuable to be wasted. He stresses that the eyes need every bit of protection they can get. Imagine how long a welder eyes would last without a protective shield. Not only is the shield provided with a special glass to screen out harmful rays, but it also prevents the welder from being hit in the eyes with molten mental. The same thing would hold true for any person involved in brazing.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Unexpected releases of toxic, reactive, or flammable liquids and gases in Pharmaceutical processes involving highly hazardous chemicals have been reported for many years (Jefress, 2000). Regardless of the industry that uses these highly hazardous chemicals, there is a potential for an accidental release any time they are not properly controlled. This, in turn, creates the possibility of disaster and accident for both employees and properties of the industry. Controlling these hazards becomes a big burden on the output and overall organizational performance. Nigerian construction firms especially the multinationals which seem to have inherited safety policies and systems from their parent companies still record repeated cases of accidents and injuries some of which include falls from height, trapped by something collapsing or overturning, struck by a moving vehicle, contact with electricity or electrical discharge, struck by flying/falling object during machine lifting of materials, contact with operating machinery or material being machined, exposure to hot or harmful substance or fire outbreak that engulfed their entire office premises (Consultnet Ltd, 2011). Most often, the problem is not the level of awareness of importance of safety neither is a safety policy absent but it is more related to poor or lack of implementation of safety programmes and systems, as it is with many other key players in the Nigerian construction industry (LaMontagne et al, 2003; Indian Council of Medical Research, 2003). Jackson et.al. (2009) states that the term occupational safety and health refers to the physiological – physical and psychological conditions of a workplace that result from work environment provided by the organization. it is against this backdrop that the researcher intend to investigate the effect of safety management system on job performance among employees in service related industries in Lagos state.

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