Employee perception of the Wellness Programme: a case of the North West Provincial Legislature, Republic South Africa

Abstract

The Government of South Africa has, over the years, been encouraging public sector organisations to initiate and adopt employee wellness programmes to ensure that the employees remain healthy and able to participate in their daily tasks in the workplace. The wellness programmes have been left to individual departments of the public sector to adopt and fund from their allocated budgets. This study examined the employee perceptions and awareness of the wellness programme at the North West Provincial Legislature in Mmabatho, Mafikeng. The objectives of the study were to determine how the wellness programme is perceived and to obtain information about what could be done in order to gauge perceptions and raise awareness. The importance of this study was that it sought to add to knowledge about how wellness programmes should be conceptualized in the public sector. A quantitative approach was utilised, with questionnaires distributed to the employees at the North West Provincial Legislature in Mmabatho, who constituted the population for the study. Only those who were permanent employees at the time the study was conducted were used. The results of the study indicated that the wellness programme was not holistic, with emphasis being on physical and social wellness. Respondents also stated that the wellness programme could be successful if it were implemented effectively, with senior management being involved in motivating employees. The wellness programme at the North West Provincial Legislature needs to adopt other programmes such as financial and spiritual wellness and the physical environment needs to be aligned to the wellness programme, for example the cafeteria and work stations. Further, research is required to examine how employees at public sector organisations can be provided with incentives to participate in the programme.