Kingsley Kwaku David Amae
College of Technology Education, University of Education, Winneba
Abstract
The study sought to establish the determinants of labour productivity of Site operatives in Ghana. Increasingly, there is labour unrest in the construction industry in most developing countries including Ghana, and productivity has become a matter of concern, because there is a demand for higher wages, while the facts on the ground is loss of man hours due to bad management practices and general attitude of workers, and construction also demand intensive labour. The main outcome from the literature is that there is no standard definition of productivity. The study adopted a quantitative design drawn from two previously studied literatures of industrial economics and labour economics. It reports on a survey made on project managers and experienced foremen of building projects in three regional capitals, namely Accra, Kumasi & Tamale. Random stratified sampling was employed to select contractors in the regions for the quantitative study. Whiles survey strategy was adopted in the collection of data. As a result, a questionnaire was developed and administered to project managers of selected construction companies. The PCA extracted four factors namely, quality leadership, communication, motivation and experience supervisors. The analysis revealed that, among 28 critical factors, the 4 extracted factors had great effect on operatives’ labour productivity. This has implications for designing managerial strategies for improving labour productivity since the extracted factors are all managerial related factors. Based on the findings, the study has made recommendations for improving the productivity of site operatives in Ghana. Recommendations have also been made for further research.
Keywords: Labour Productivity, Site Operatives, Constructions Management
