The effect of wellness programmes on shop-floor employees’ absenteeism at altech UEC SA (Pty) Ltd

Abstract

A major problem characterising the manufacturing industry is absenteeism. As a result of absenteeism there is a loss of efficiency from the labour force, causing companies to lose out on production efficiency and thus affecting production and profits. Studies have delved into the reasons why employees may choose to remain absent and research has found that the level of absenteeism by employees is influenced by a number of factors, which include socio-economic, religious, health and matters of a personal nature. There are also aspects of the working environment that cause an employee to remain absent from work. This study investigated a manufacturing organisation, Altech UEC and focused on how the implementation of a wellness program impacted on and affected the level of absenteeism within the workplace. The study used the quantitative research design and sampled 394 participants within the shop floor workforce across five different departments. A cross tabulation and Kruskal-Wallis Factorial data analysis method was used to determine patterns of significance within the collected data. The findings revealed that there were ten factors of significance to the study, which showed the positive impact wellness programs had in reducing the level of absenteeism within shop-floor employees. The findings also showed that certain aspects of the wellness programs needed to be improved, or removed from the wellness programs, as they bear no significance on the health of the employees. The study also showed that services such as HIV testing and biological monitoring tests assisted in improving the wellness of employees to reduce the level of absenteeism by the employees. Based on these findings, it was recommended that the management of the organisation collaborated with employees, in a more gender specific focus, to enhance the service offerings provided by the wellness programs. It was also recommended that it should be determined as to which services should specifically be offered to male and female employees, in order to facilitate a decrease in the level of absenteeism amongst the shop-floor employees in the manufacturing environment of the organisation.