Assessment of Job Stress and Safety Behaviour of Workers in Selected Food Manufacturing Companies in Rivers State

This study assessed job stress and safety behavior of workers in food manufacturing companies in the Rivers State, Nigeria. Descriptive and inferential research designs were adopted. Job stress was captured using workload stress, job security stress and work-family conflict stress while safety behaviour was operationalized using safety participation and safety compliance. Four main group of food manufacturing companies operating in River State namely bakeries and confectioneries, food processing companies, soft drinks, beer and alcoholic beverages and water bottling companies. Purposive sampling technique was adopted in which two companies from the four groups of food manufacturing companies sampled and 430 workers were selected. The instrument for data collection was a well-structured questionnaire designed based on five-point Likert scale while descriptive, correlation and regression statistical analysis were the methods adopted for data analysis. The results of the descriptive statistics revealed that there is substantial high level of job stress among the workers (WA = 3.14 > 3.00) and there is high level of good safety behaviour among the workers (WA=3.31>3.00). Correlation analysis showed that that workload stress, job security stress, work-family conflict stress as well as overall job stress has significant relationship with safety participation (r = 0.207, -0.268, -0.260-0.385, p = 0.000 respectively less than 0.05 significance level) and safety compliance (r = 0.198, -0.096, -0.146, -0.356. p = 0.001, 0.008, 0.008 and 0.000 respectively less than 0.05 significance level). It was concluded that job stress has significant relationship with safety behaviour.