Employee knowledge, awareness and perceptions about the Employee Wellness Programme in the Ministry of Health, Swaziland.

Abstract

Many companies are becoming increasingly aware of the issues pertaining to employee well-being or wellness. There has been a growing public interest with regards to integrating wellness activities with the responsibilities of the employer. This shift with regard to healthy workplaces and employees that are empowered represents trends between organizational well-being and positive psychological states. As a result of this, various programmes were introduced such as Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) and Employee Wellness Programmes (EWPs) to address the issues of wellness in the workplace. Employee Wellness Programmes are defined as intervention strategies aimed to promote the well-being of workers. The study was conducted to establish the reasons employees either take up or do not take up services offered within the Employee Wellness Programme at the Ministry of Health in order to provide guidelines to make the programme effective and to render the programme more cost effective. A stratified random sampling method was used to select the samples. Data were collected using a selfadministered questionnaire. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents (88.3%) were aware of the existence of the Employee Wellness Programme. The result also showed that 48.3% of the respondents rated the programme as good whereas 25% rated it as fair. Furthermore, the results revealed that 48.3% of the respondents have attended activities offered by the programme whilst 45% have not. The most common barrier that prevented employees from participating was inconvenient time or location of the activities (41.7%). Lastly, the majority of the respondents (73.3%) indicated that the ministry should use incentive to encourage employee participation. There is need for senior management to show commitment for the programme, monitoring and evaluation of the programme, strengthening communication, establishing proactive wellness committees, creating a wellness culture among employees as well as providing incentives for participating in the programme.