THE IMPACT OF WORK ENVIRONMENT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
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THE IMPACT OF WORK ENVIRONMENT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
ABSTRACT
The study investigated the effect of the work environment on employee performance.
The investigation used a survey design. The primary source was used to gather data for this investigation. Data will be collected through the use of well-structured questionnaires for the population.
The survey research approach was ideal since it allows for the use of questionnaires whose replies can be transformed to quantitative values for inferential analysis.
The sample size for the study was calculated using the research advisors’ sampling table. Based on a 5% margin of error, the sample size is thus determined as 384. To address the issue of non-response, 30% of the sample size will be added, as shown below: sample size = 384 + 115 = 499.
The methodology used was multisampling, which combines stratified and random sampling methods. The stratified sample approach was utilised to group the SMEs into groups or strata based on the four divisions of Ogun state: Yewa, Ijebu Remo, and Egba. The random sample technique will then be used to randomly select SMEs from each stratum.
The findings revealed that there is no significant association between communication and citizenship behaviour among selected small firms in Ogun state. R = 0.715, p = 0.000 < 0.05;
Workload has no significant impact on the efficiency of selected small enterprises in Ogun State. The study found no significant relationship between workplace psychology and emotional intelligence in small enterprises in Ogun state (R = 0.449, R2 = 0.202, F = 106.270, p = 0.000 < 0.05). R = 0.173, R2 = 0.030, F = 13.040, p = 0.000 < 0.05.
The study found that the work environment had no substantial impact on employee performance.
The study revealed that periodic meetings with employees to express their grievances to management could serve as a motivating factor for them. Managers should also be counselled on their relationships with their subordinates; the organisation should have a good programme in place for their employees work-life balance as this can be a great factor to motivate and retain them;
management should try as much as possible to build a work environment that attracts, retains, and motivates its employees so that they can work comfortably and increase the organization’s productivity; employers should make available adjustable
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study.
There has been extensive research into how organisations may become more competitive and lucrative. According to some of the study, successful organisations have high staff performance. According to Campbell (2011), performance is “what the organisation hires one to do and do well”.
Employees that perform well assist leaders build exceptional organisations. Employee performance is influenced by several things. Job performance measures how successfully a person does their job.
Employee performance demonstrates the effectiveness of specific actions taken by employees to help the organisation achieve its goals. It is defined as how to carry out job tasks in accordance with the job description. Performance is the art of completing a task within the stated boundaries.
Management’s new job is to create an environment that will attract, retain, and motivate its employees. Managers and supervisors at all levels of the organisation share responsibility. The work environment has an impact on employee morale, productivity, and engagement, both favourably and adversely.
The work environment includes the office buildings, their furniture and layout, as well as the physical conditions under which employees work.
It is also concerned with the external aspects to the business that the office serves, such as the industry or other activities that the business engages in, as well as the conventions and laws of the community in which they operate.
These environmental conditions are constantly changing, and the workplace must adapt to those changes. The workplace is dynamic, but the most dynamic feature in the office is the human element.
Workers nowadays are better educated than in the past, and they are more likely to question their working environment. However, a poor work environment and poor working circumstances pose a significant risk to workers’ health, causing them to work with less joy and excitement, stifling growth.
Higher salary and benefits may appear to be the most effective ways to attract staff. However, the quality of the physical office environment can have a significant impact on a company’s capacity to attract and retain outstanding employees.
Some workplace characteristics may be regarded significant in influencing employee engagement, productivity, morale, and comfort level, both favourably and adversely.
Although convenient workplace conditions are necessary for increasing productivity and quality of outcomes, many organisations’ working conditions may have a lack of safety, health, and comfort difficulties such as poor lighting and ventilation, excessive noise, and emergency excess.
People working under inconvenient settings may have poor performance and develop occupational health disorders, resulting in significant absenteeism and turnover. There are many organisations where employees face working conditions issues due to environmental and physical variables.
Pech and Slade (2006) suggested that employee disengagement is increasing, making it more vital to create workplaces that favourably influence the workforce.
According to Pech and Slade, the focus is on the symptoms of disengagement, such as distraction, lack of interest, poor decisions, and frequent absences, rather than the underlying causes.
A creative career requires a high level of influence in the workplace. Individuals with a work environment that matched the creative requirements of their occupations reported higher job satisfaction and lower intentions to leave.
Improving employee creative performance has been advocated as critical for keeping competitive in a changing environment and increasing an organization’s total creativity (Janssen, O. and NW. Van Yperen, 2004).
The work environment is divided into two components: physical and behavioural. The physical environment is made up of factors that relate to office occupants’ capacity to physically connect with their work environment.
The behavioural environment is made up of components that relate to how successfully office workers engage with one another and how the office environment might influence an individual’s behaviour.
According to, the physical environment influences the productivity of its occupants in two ways: office layout (open-plan vs. cellular offices) and office comfort (matching the office environment to work processes), and the behavioural environment represents two major components: interaction and distraction.
Every organisation is created for a certain goal, which is commonly referred to as its mission; however, this cannot be accomplished if the environment is unhealthy.
The absence of several required office facilities, such as air conditioning, carpeting, and adequate ventilation, results in a poor and unpleasant work environment.
The environment is widely regarded as man’s immediate surroundings, which he manages to ensure his survival. Wrongful management adds dangers into the workplace, making it dangerous and reducing worker productivity.
As a result, the workplace is an atmosphere in which the worker performs his work (Chapins, 2014), but an effective workplace is one in which management’s expectations are met (Mike, 2010; Shikdar, 2002). The physical environment influences how personnel in an organisation interact, accomplish jobs, and are directed.
The physical environment, as a component of the work environment, has had a direct impact on human perception, altering interpersonal interactions and hence productivity. This is because the qualities of a room or meeting space for a group have an impact on productivity and satisfaction levels.
In today’s business world, the most important component in keeping an employee satisfied is their work environment. Today’s workplace is unique, diverse, and ever-changing. The traditional employer-employee relationship has been turned upside down.
Workers are living in a booming economy with nearly endless work prospects. This combination of circumstances has resulted in an environment in which the company values its people more than the employees value the company (Smith, 2013).
Many firms fail to recognise the importance of the working environment for employee job satisfaction, and as a result, employees encounter numerous challenges at work. Such organisations are internally weak and thus unable to deliver innovative items into the market to outperform their competitors (Aiken, Clarke, & Sloane, 2002).
Employees play an important role in attaining a company’s mission and vision. Employees must meet the performance requirements established by the organisation to ensure the quality of their work.
To satisfy organisational requirements, employees want a working environment that allows them to operate freely without obstacles that can prevent them from functioning to the best of their abilities.
With technology advancements, new communication methods, virtual reality, e-market improvement, and alternative work patterns, the workplace is rapidly changing (Challenger, 2011).
To handle these quick changes while preserving or improving performance, organisations have increasingly adopted some form of environment, such as open office space (Terricone & Luca, 2008).
This form of work setting encourages new ways of working and makes the workplace more flexible, allowing for better interpersonal access and communication than fully contained private rooms. The transition to an open plan office has enhanced staff productivity when compared to closed office environments (Becker, 2002).
Furthermore, it is easier to communicate with someone you can see than someone who is adjacent/distant or divided from you by items (J’Istvan, 2010).
The open office promotes an egalitarian system with equal working circumstances, reducing employee distance and improving communication flow (Brennan, Chugh, & Kline, Hedge, 2014).
A positive company culture is likely to pay dividends in a variety of real ways. Firms can increase their reputation, productivity, talent acquisition, staff retention, and engagement.
The workplace environment is critical in assuring employee job performance (Naharuddin & Sadegi, 2013), since it can affect employee morale and productivity (Chandrasekar, 2011).
A quality workplace environment is considered to influence workers throughout the organisation in a variety of ways, including job performance. Lighting, noise, communication, and psychological support are all thought to have a substantial impact on employee morale, which can reduce work productivity. (Boyce, Veith, Newsham, Myer, & Hunter, 2013).
Incompatible workplace environments, such as poorly designed workstations, inadequate office furniture, a lack of ventilation, and insufficient safety measures, are other contributing factors to occupational disorders.
Ettner and Grzywacs found that workplace environment characteristics have a significant impact on respondents’ jobs, indicating a relationship between the two (Shikdar & Sawaqed, 2003; Ettner & Grzywacz, 2001).
Prior studies also revealed that an employee’s job performance level will be determined by the workplace environment (Naharuddin & Sadegi, 2013). Employee productivity and performance will suffer as a result of an unsuitable work environment. Furthermore, today’s working environment varies from the past because workers now work with technological advancements.
The concept of work environment encompasses the physical, psychological, and social components of the working conditions. The work environment has both beneficial and bad effects on the psychological and well-being of employees.
It is a broad category that includes the physical environment (noise, equipment, heat), the essentials of the job (workload, task, complexity), significant business elements (culture, history), and even extra-business background. However, when it comes to job happiness and employee well-being, all factors of the workplace are as important or appropriate.
Mali (2008) defines productivity as “the measure of how resources are brought together in organisations and utilised to achieve a set of results.” Productivity means achieving the best level of performance with the least amount of resources.
The word “employee productivity” refers to the amount of products and services produced or supplied per employee in a certain time period. Productivity is defined as an employee’s ability to produce used values (goods and services) that are typical for a given state, technique, and organisation (Lambert, 2000; Nwachukwu, 1987).
Lambert (2005) stated that “it is the number of management functions in the work environment which appear to have been the key factor inhibiting higher productivity”.
Understanding the impact of the work environment on employee productivity cannot be overstated in any organisation. Workers’ environments clearly have a direct impact on them. In a terrible work environment, an employee’s expertise will provide no productivity gains.
Workers in state firms are unproductive due to inadequate environmental conditions. As a result of the negative impact of the work environment on employee performance, Mill stressed the importance of providing a decent physical work environment for workers in 1930, following World War I.
During this time, various management were concerned with the significance of sustaining loyalty and morale by removing irritants like temperature, noise, and pollution from their workplace.
1.2 Statement of Problem
Management’s new goal is to create a work environment that attracts, keeps, and encourages employees. Keeping employees satisfied now requires a completely different approach than it did just a few years ago. Many workplace elements affect employee performance.
The relationship between personality, work environment preferences, and outcome variables such as performance and commitment influences an employee’s performance at work.
Research has demonstrated that the work environment has a significant impact on employee performance and attitude, and this is to determine whether employees at chosen small firms in Ogun state are experiencing the same problem.
A huge number of work environment studies have found that employees/users are satisfied with various workspace aspects. Users’ preferences for lighting, ventilation rates, access to natural light, and acoustic environment are extremely important to their productivity and workplace satisfaction (Becker, 1981; Humphries, 2005; Veitch, Charles, Newsham, Marquardt, & Geerts, 2004; Karasek & Theorell, 1990).
Lighting and other elements, like as ergonomic furniture, have been shown to improve employee health and productivity (Dilani, 2004; Milton, Glencross, & Walters, 2000; Veitch & Newsham, 2000).
This is because light has a significant impact on workers’ physical, physiological, and psychological health, as well as their overall working performance.
Ambient features in office environments, such as lighting, temperature, the presence of windows, and free air movement, indicate that these physical environment elements influence employees’ attitudes, behaviours, satisfaction, performance, and productivity (Larsen, Adams, Deal, Kweon, & Tyler; Veitch & Gifford, 2010).
Noise is one of the primary causes of employee distraction, resulting in decreased productivity, significant inaccuracies, and increased job-related stress.
According to Bruce (2010), workplace interruptions reduce employee productivity by up to 40% while increasing errors by 27%. According to Hicks (2011), a poor working environment exposes employees to injuries, discomfort
and reduces productivity; thus, an organisation must create a conducive workplace that will safeguard them during emergency situations.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The purpose of this study is to investigate and identify the impact of the work environment on employee performance, as well as to determine whether inadequacy of various conditional factors can impair employee productivity.
It also aims to determine whether the nature of the work environment contributes to low productivity, absenteeism, and tardiness among employees.
The primary goal of this research is to investigate the impact of the work environment on employee productivity in selected small enterprises in Ogun state. Specifically, the study will be conducted to
Investigate the association between communication and citizenship conduct in selected small enterprises in Ogun state.
Discover how workload affects the efficiency of workers at selected small firms in Ogun state.
Evaluate the impact of workplace psychology on emotional intelligence in selected small firms in Ogun state.
1.4 Research Questions.
The following questions will lead the investigation of the study.
• What is the relationship between communication and citizenship behaviour among selected small enterprises in Ogun State?
• How does workload affect the efficiency of selected small enterprises in Ogun State?
• What is the impact of workplace psychology on the emotional condition of selected small enterprises in Ogun condition?
1.5 Hypotheses for the Study
The following tentative assertions will lead the research:
Hypothesis One
H0: There is no significant association between communication and citizenship behaviour among selected small firms in Ogun state.
H1: There is a significant link between communication and citizenship behaviour among selected small firms in Ogun state.
Hypothesis two.
H0: Workload has no substantial effect on the efficiency of selected small enterprises in Ogun state.
H1: Workload has a considerable impact on the efficiency of chosen small enterprises in Ogun State.
Hypothesis three.
H0: Workplace psychology has no substantial influence on the emotional intelligence of selected small firms in Ogun state.
H1: Workplace psychology has a considerable impact on the emotional intelligence of selected small firms in Ogun State.
1.6 Operationalizing Research Variables
Y = f (X)
Y equals employee productivity.
X represents the work environment.
Y = (y1,y2,y3), where y1 represents citizenship behaviour, y2 efficiency, and y3 emotional intelligence.
X = (x1,x2,x3), where x1 is communication, x2 is workload, and x3 is workplace psychology.
The basic functional equation that may be derived from these variables is as follows:
y1 = f(x1)….. eqn (1)
y2 = f(x2)….. eqn (3)
y3 = f(x3)….. eqn (3)
Regression equations or models are as follows:
y1 = α0 + β1×1 + µ…… (1)
y2 = α0 + β1×2 + µ…… (2)
y3 = α0 + β1×3 + µ…… (3)
The equation’s constant is α, the coefficients are β and µ is the error term.
1.7 Scope of Study
The scope of this study will be on the impact of work environment on employee performance, with a particular emphasis on SME’s in Ogun state. The study’s population is given as 1,165,848 SMEs in Ogun state, registered with SMEDAN as of the previous survey in 2013. The survey design will be adopted.
Primary data will be used, together with a well-structured questionnaire, to collect data for the study. The data will be analysed using correlation and regression tools, as well as a process tool for moderation analysis.
The study locations will be determined by the sample size, which will be distributed over Ogun state’s four major zones: Egba, Remo, Ijebu, and Yewa.
1.8 Significance of the Study
Employee performance is crucial to organisational success. This study’s relevance can be assessed in the following ways:
Management
Research papers and textbooks on productivity and the workplace are not exhaustive. The researcher believes that this study will be useful reading material for students and academics.
The report will also act as a manual for managers and other corporate organisations. It is hoped that the results would prompt additional research into productivity in other sectors of Nigeria’s economy.
Industry
This study’s findings will provide management with an empirical foundation for addressing the difficulties of employee productivity and the work environment.
The researcher believes that inefficiency and ineffectiveness, which result in low production fixity, low profitability, and chaos in organisations, are the outcome of insufficient and bad productivity.
If this is true, a study like this will assist organisations in assessing their work environment and making changes as needed if their survival, effectiveness, efficiency, and profit maximisation goals, among others, are to be met in an ordered and efficient manner.
Government
The findings of this research will go a long way towards advising the government, senior management, policymakers, and private owners of businesses and services on structures to use in order to improve performance and productivity in their organisations.
Workers, senior and junior staff, researchers, public administrators, and the government will all benefit greatly from this study. The report will help policymakers re-assess worker productivity and prepare for future improvements. The study can greatly assist the government in developing policies regarding worker productivity in the SME sub-sector.
Employee
The study will assist workers in identifying their areas of weakness and developing strategies to improve. The survey may reflect the requirements of employees, prompting employers and the government to make changes to better the situation.
The study can also be valuable for future academics interested in staff productivity in Ogun State or elsewhere. The findings of this study will also provide information to academic institutions and increase employee motivation and commitment; additionally, this study will be an asset important to the workplace’s future growth and development.
1.9 Operational Definitions of Terms
Work Environment: This refers to the physical, emotional, sound, psychological, and spiritual ambiance of a workplace.
Productivity is the measure of how resources are brought together in organisations and used to achieve a set of objectives.
Employee productivity (also known as workforce productivity) is an evaluation of the efficiency of a worker or group of workers. Productivity can be measured in terms of an employee’s output over a certain period of time.
Communication is the act or process of utilising words, sounds, signs, or actions to express or trade information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, and so on to another person.
Workload: The term workload can refer to a variety of distinct but related concepts. However, it is obvious that cognitive burden emerges from mental processes when executing activities, based on the user’s skills and the task demands.
Workplace Psychology is the profession of applying psychological ideas and practices to the workplace in order to solve problems and improve performance.
Organisational Citizenship Behaviour: This refers to a person’s voluntary engagement inside an organisation or corporation that is not part of his or her contractual obligations.
Efficiency is a degree of performance that specifies a process that employs the fewest inputs to produce the greatest number of outputs.
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, as well as to manage interpersonal relationships wisely and compassionately. Emotional intelligence is crucial for both personal and professional success.
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