Task performance and occupational health and safety management systems in the garment industry of Bangladesh

Abstract

PurposeThis study investigates the relationship between individual task performance of garment workers and occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS) in the garment industry of Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a quantitative research approach and using a four-stage cluster sampling technique, data collected from 610 workers of twelve garments supplier factories using a structured questionnaire. Mean, standard deviation, correlation and stepwise multiple regressions performed to understand the relationship between task performance and OHSMS.FindingsThe study results demonstrate that occupational health and safety (OHS) policy, benchmarking, worker participation, OHS training, communication, emergency response, preventive and protective action, monitoring and review are the significant predictors of individual task performance of garment workers; and OHS policy contributes most substantially to the variance of task performance in the garment industry of Bangladesh.Research limitations/implicationsThis study’s findings contribute to operations management, human resources management and the health and safety management literature by demonstrating a link between operational performance, human resources management and OHSMS.Practical implicationsThis study could be beneficial for garment suppliers to understand how effective OHSMS can reduce production costs by increasing worker efficiency.Originality/valueThis is a unique research attempt as it considers the task performance dimension of an individual garment worker from the OHS management perspective.

Managing employees’ health, safety and anxiety in a pandemic

“…This enabled some employees to work from home to reduce the number of employees at the workplace. This modification supports a suggestion by Hoque and Shahinuzzaman (2021) that it is necessary that OHS policies are checked and updated regularly to comply with legal requirements. The modification was done to help maintain social distance at the workplace per Covid protocols (ILO, 2020).…”

“…We were not used to doing certain safety practices, like washing of hands regularly, social distancing and all that, but once covid came, we were educated on the need for it, and all asked to comply, so we did to ensure that we complied and were more mindful of what to do and even how to do it. (Participant 14) Therefore, it can be inferred that the lack of knowledge about safety practices hinders safety performance (Hoque and Shahinuzzaman, 2021), which then causes an increase in unsafe behaviours at the workplace (Cechini et al, 2018) and vice versa. This corroborates findings from Cechini et al's (2018) study that employees do not adhere to safety measures if they are not given special training.…”

“…Even though this company had shown commitment towards its employees' (both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaians) safety and health in the past, the pandemic required the implementation of additional practices and strategies to safeguard employees' safety, health and manage their anxiety. This is because the successful management of employees' anxiety (Aguiar-Quintana et al, 2021), health and safety (Huber et al, 2015;Hoque and Shahinuzzaman, 2021), their commitment (Berhan, 2020) has a significant impact on their performance and also causes a great reduction in risk and disease-causing. Again, Ebbevi et al (2020) after a review of forty-nine studies confirmed that one set of best practices is not applicable in all context and organisation, justifying the need for this study to find out what pertains in the developing countries' context.…”

“…, 2021), health and safety (Huber et al. , 2015; Hoque and Shahinuzzaman, 2021), their commitment (Berhan, 2020) has a significant impact on their performance and also causes a great reduction in risk and disease-causing. Again, Ebbevi et al.…”

Social and psychological resources moderate the relation between anxiety, fatigue, compliance and turnover intention during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…, 2020). It has been shown that human resource management that has incorporated health and safety measures has contributed substantially to the variance in task performance, engagement and productivity in developing countries before and during the pandemic (Hoque and Shahinuzzaman, 2021; Liu et al , 2022; Meegahapola and Prabodanie, 2018; Sutarto et al. , 2021).…”