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
