Analysing the effects of employee benefits on the productivity in a South African mine

Abstract

Employee benefits play an important role in the productivity of the mine. These benefits focus on ensuring that employees are protected, and their quality of life is uplifted. Examples of employee benefits include retirement plans, health protection insurance, education reimbursement, security, and recognition benefits. The main reason most organisations construct employee benefit programmes is so that they can attract, retain and encourage employees. However, organisations implement employee benefits while striving to cut costs for their operations. It is therefore important to investigate if the employee benefits do influence the productivity of employees in the mine. The data collection for this study was done using structured questionnaires. The questionnaire utilised was obtained from a similar study conducted by Kamau (2013) in Kenya in 2011. The descriptive survey design was used in this research with the focus of finding the frequency with which something happens and also the connection between variables by using inter-mean correlation as an additional reliability statistic. The study focused on the mine's employees who have been employed by the mine for over one year and are not in executive positions. The study reveals that employee benefits are important to employees and have an influence on their productivity. Unfortunately, from the results, employees believe that employee benefits are not distributed fairly to all employees. In addition, the results also show that employees would like to be recognised for their hard work in the form of recognition benefits. The study, therefore, recommends the establishment of employee recognition benefit programmes for a job well done to all the employees that are doing an outstanding job. Proper information dissemination ensures that all employees are aware of the employee benefits offered by the mine and ensures that information becomes easily accessible and dispersed to all levels.