Occupational Health and Safety Practices and Job Performance: Evidence from Non-Executive Employees of Tea Factories in Rathnapura District

Abstract

The tea industry plays a significant role in the Sri Lankan economy in terms of foreign exchange earnings and providing employment opportunities. The performance of the employees is one of the key success factors of this industry. Occupational health and safety considerably beneficial for any industry, as healthy employees are guaranteed to be more productive. The existing literature does not provide clear evidence on the relationship between occupational health and safety practices and the job performance of the employees of the tea industry in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between occupational health and safety practices and the job performance of non-executive employees of tea factories in the Rathnapura district. The sample of 152 non-executive employees was randomly selected from three tea factories in the Rathnapura district using a questionnaire. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 23.0 was used to process data while Mean Score and Standard Deviation were used for univariate analysis and correlation coefficient was used for bivariate analysis. The hypotheses were tested using the results of the correlation analysis. The results reveal that a significant positive relationship between health and safety rules & policies, hazard prevention and job performance. The most dominant factor was hazard prevention. The study concludes that occupational health and safety practices positively affect employee performance.