Work Environment In The Workplace

Employers who are able to put in place a competitive and attractive strategy and not view it as a burden but instead as an effective investment strategy may gain invaluable returns in the form of employee attraction and also in productivity (Leopold, 2010; Gberevbie, 2010).

The survival for any organization or employer lies in the hands of its employees. Therefore, these parties need to take the correct steps and make the right decision to properly reward its employee since it is them that could make or break an organization.

It has been shown that adequate rewards, be it in the form of compensation or benefits related to the job or both, is a motivating factor for employee to become committed and improve their performance (Gberevbie, 2010).

However, it should be noted that the workplace environment in a majority of organization is unsafe and unhealthy. This includes poorly designed workstations, unsuitable furniture,lack of ventilation, inappropriate lighting, excessive noise, insufficient safety measure in fire emergencies and lack of personal protective equipment. Therefore, the workplace entails an environment in which the worker performs his work (Ajala, 2012). The central concern of the quality working environment perspective is the wellbeing of employees. In contrast to the literature on quitting, quality working environment does not focus on individual employee or job characteristics (Boxall et al. 2003; Cottini et al., 2009) but, instead, is a concept that encompasses the physical aspects, psycho-social and organizational surroundings of work (Busck et al., 2010; Sell and Cleal,

These connections have been a strong tradition in Scandinavian and socio-technical literature (Emery and Thorsrud, 1976; Gustavsen and Hunnius, 1981). The quality working environment concept has its origins in Scandinavia where, since the 1970s it largely replaced the narrower concept of ‘occupational health and safety,’ which was associated mainly with physical risks and hazards at work. Specifically, quality working environment encompasses the concept of the ‘psycho-social work environment,’ which denotes how job demands and social structures and interactions in the organization influence the psychological wellbeing of employees, thus allowing a broad understanding of how people are affected by their employment, including experience of job satisfaction and stress (Hvid and Hasle, 2003). In an addition, the workplace environment is the most critical factor in keeping an employee satisfied in today’s business