Assessing the impact of ergonomic situations on the wellbeing of teachers in basic public and private schools of the Awutu Senya East Municipal of the Central Region of Ghana

Abstract

The ergonomic situations of the workplace directly and or indirectly impact on the emotional and physical wellbeing of the worker as working continuously with the wrong body posture can affect the musculoskeletal system of the body. The concept of ergonomics is basically to ensure the creation of enabling working environment that ensures the safety and comfort of employees. This study was aimed at assessing the impact of ergonomic situations on the wellbeing of Teachers in basic public and private schools of the Awutu Senya East Municipal of the Central Region of Ghana. This study therefore seeks to assess the ergonomics and occupational health situations among private and public schools in Ghana. The cross-sectional study, the descriptive survey and a case study approach was applied in this study. A set of Standard Nordic Questionnaire was adopted as the tool for data collection and the gathered data was analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft Excel Pivot table charts. The data analysis was done by the use of mean response ratings and correlation analysis. A total of 140 purposively selected respondents were invited by email with a link to the online questionnaire to participate in answering the question of the questionnaire of this study. As the process of the data collection was purposively driven, 112 out of the 140 invited respondents participated in answering the questions, for a response rate of 80 percent. The study brought to light that there is indeed a positive correlation between ergonomic situations on the wellbeing of teachers in both public and private basic schools in Ghana, although the degree of the relation is higher at the public basic schools than in the case of the private schools. It is therefore recommended that adequate measures and policies should be put in place to address and improve on ergonomic situations in public and private basic schools in Ghana in line with best practices as per the frameworks associated with the ergonomic phenomenon to safeguard the wellbeing and safety of teachers.