Safety Behaviours of Volta River Authority Workers, Akosombo

Abstract

The health and safety of employees is an important aspect of any organisations. The determination of the factors that influence employees' behaviour to safety issues is an important step in achieving and maintaining safety at the workplace. This study examined the prevalence of workplace health conditions, safety behaviours, and factors that influence safety behaviours among Volta River Authority (VRA) employees at Akosombo. The research employed a mixed-method approach to achieve the study objectives. Participants included 250 randomly selected operational staff and non-operational staff. Questionnaire was used for quantitative data collection while an interview checklist was used for the qualitative data collection. The quantitative data were analysed using frequencies, percentages, and chi-square in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 23). Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. The results showed that behaviour of staff towards health and safety is influenced by the availability of PPE, their attitude, and the enforcement of safety protocols by management. Though the staff perceived their work as highly risky, injuries rate at work was minimal. The main factors influencing health and safety at Akosombo VRA are workload, worker competency, management commitment, resource availability, safety policies, and working culture. It is recommended that the management of VRA need to manage the workload of staff to mitigate injury occurrence. Management of VRA needs to also provide adequate PPE and strictly enforce safety policies at the workplace to increase adherence to safety behaviours among the employees