Environmental Factors and Affective Well-Being Influence on Mine Workers Absenteeism in South Africa

Human resources remain the most important and valuable assets of every organisation. In effect, the strategic monitoring and management of related environmental factors and employees’ affective well-being for continued presence at work are becoming increasingly fundamental. The mining industry is characterised with different environmental factors and affective well-being puzzle that may likely affect employees’ turnaround time at work. While available studies have largely investigated how environmental factors predict employee’s well-being, what is unclear is how environmental factors and affective well-being determines employee’s absenteeism from work. Using a quantitative study, this study examines how environmental factors and affective well-being influence workers absenteeism in South African mine industry. A total of 280 mineworkers were randomly selected using a descriptive survey of the probability sampling technique. The retrieved data were analysed using both the simple and multivariate regression analysis. The findings revealed that both environmental factors and affective well-being do not predict mine workers absenteeism, although environmental factors show more variation in employee’s absenteeism than affective well-being. Similarly, the different environmental factors including exposure to noise, dust, vibration, temperature and heavy lifting do not show any evidence to have predicted mine workers turnaround time at work, except hazardous materials. The study concludes that mitigating the consequence provoked by hazardous materials on mine workers will significantly increase employees’ presence at work. Thus, the study makes a case for the revitalisation of the South African mining industry, especially in the area of setting out modalities for the control of strenuous environmental factors, particularly hazardous materials in the workplace.