Job Insecurity, Psychological Wellbeing and Safety Compliance in Steel Manufacturing Company

Abstract

Job insecurity has become a critical phenomenon for discussion in the heightened harsh economic state of most organisations where certainty to long-term employment cannot be guaranteed. On the basis of this, the purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between job insecurity, psychological wellbeing and safety compliance. The moderating effect of employee empowerment between job insecurity and psychological well-being, as well as the relationship between job insecurity and safety compliance was also examined. A convenient sample of 120 employees of Ferro Fabrik Limited, a steel manufacturing company in Tema was used. A cross sectional survey design was used to collect data from the employees. It was hypothesised that employees with high job insecurity will report lower psychological wellbeing and lower safety compliance; however the presence of employee empowerment will impact the strength of the relationship between job insecurity and safety compliance. The multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and moderation analysis were used to examine the interaction effect and also determine moderating effects respectively. Results showed that employees with higher job insecurity were reported to have lower psychological wellbeing and less safety conscious with employee empowerment moderating the relationship between job insecurity and safety compliance. The results were discussed within the framework of psychological contract theory, social exchange and stress model theory. It is recommended that future researchers seek to identify the conditions under social exchange that are likely to increase psychological wellbeing of insecure employees in the presence of an empowering environment ,to aid in further theory building.