The influence of leadership styles, work environment and job satisfaction of employee performance : a case study of the Ghana health service, Kumasi Metropolis

Abstract

The performance of employees has become a major concern for organizational changing environment presently. Individual’s performance is surrounded with several factors which includes leadership style, work environment and job satisfaction. These variables have impacts on the employee’s performance at workplace. A comfortable and comprehensive of the variables will improve the employee’s performance accordingly. It is for this reason that this study sought to investigate the influence of leadership style, work environment and job satisfaction of employees on performance, a case study of Ghana Health Service (GHS), Kumasi Metropolis. Additionally, recommendations were made to assist employees and management of GHS in their provision of quality health care delivery to the people of Ghana. The objectives of the study includes; to establish the leadership styles used by the leaders at various management units of GHS; to identify employee perceptions of their leadership style, work environment and job satisfaction; to examine the relationship between leadership style, work environment, job satisfaction and employee performance; to establish the effect of leadership style, work environment and job satisfaction on employee performance at workplace; and to consider ways of enhancing employee performance as a result of organizational improvement. The study reviewed relevant literatures on the variables of leadership, work environment, job satisfaction and performance in the literature review. Quantitative tool was employed to examine information which was collected through a questionnaire and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. Moreover, 200 employees were randomly selected from GHS facilities within the Kumasi Metropolis which temporary staffs were excluded for the study. Out of the sample size, 180 respondents fully answered the questionnaire in accordance with the objectives of the research. The study revealed that managers used laissez-faire, transformational and transactional leadership style depending on the situation but were more conversant with transformational leadership style. Laissez-faire leadership style was the least used by mangers. Findings also demonstrated that, workplace environment had an influence on employee performance as respondents strongly agree the comfortability of the physical work environment. Respondents exhibited moderate levels of job satisfaction. Findings also demonstrated that, the productivity level of employees was generally perceived to be 60% referring to be exceptional for the past six months. It was also revealed that their productivity level falls by 8.3% after six months and its needs improvement. This confirmed respondents rating 77.2% on their colleague that, improvement is needed to increase their job performance in various units. Employees performance will improve if the issues discovered throughout the survey are addressed by management The findings of this study have implications for the policy development on Human Resource System.