Assessing the Employee Well-Being and Performance in Small-Sized Construction Organization

Abstract

Performance in paid work has for many years been studied as an important form of individual and group behavior, with researchers and practitioners often aiming for its enhancement through job design, staff selection and development, or shaping managerial style and organizational culture. In parallel with this interest in performance, psychologists in employment settings have also worked to understand the sources and consequences of well-being, motivation and performance. These three variables are examined together in the assessing the employee well-being in small-sized construction organization in Ekiti State. Employee well-being is considered as an important tool for enhancing worker’s performance and construction sector is not an exception. It has been empirically established that well-being has positive impact on construction worker’s performance. Moreover, empirical studies have shown that performance in the sector has been decreasing globally. This study therefore aims at understand the demanding working environment of the construction industry and the factors which lead to employees being troubled. The researcher was of the opinion that an improved well-being of employees can significantly improve the organization productivity. Quantitative research design was employed with same questionnaire administered on the population covered. Random sampling techniques were used to select small-sized construction organization sampled from a selected population in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Purposive sampling was used to administer questionnaires to various employees. 75questionnaires were administered to employee collectively and 70 was filled and returned which constitute 93.3% success rate. Questionnaire was designed in Likert scale of 1-5. Analysis was done by statistical packages for social sciences version 17. Descriptive statistics which include mean percentile and tables were used to present the data. One Way Analysis of Variance was used to determine whether there is relationship between well-being and organization performance. Data analysis and results on the factors affecting small-sized construction organization employee well-being indicates that there is a statistically significant linear relationship between well-being and performance. The result also revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between well-being and employee’s performance which reinforces the reinforcement and expectancy theory of remuneration especially the concept of Thorndike’s Law of Effect meaning a response followed by a reward is more likely to recur in the future. The study concluded that well-being has impact on employees and organization performance and recommend that the employers of labor both private and government must not take the well-being of their employees for granted because it will result in low productivity.