Contribution of work place stress management to employee Performance at national hospital insurance fund, Kenya

Abstract

The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) is a state corporation through NHIF Act No. 9 of 1998. The Fund’s core mandate is to provide social medical insurance cover to all its members and their declared dependents (spouse and children). But according to NHIF Performance Report 2017- 2018, the Fund (NHIF) has continued to implement social health strategies with a view to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) for the benefit of all Kenyans. Revenue has risen to ksh 47.9 billion in 2017/2018 from ksh 37.2 billion in 2016/2017 but operating surplus has dropped to ksh 2.0 billion from 2.4 billion. Administrative and other operating expenses have also gone up. The figures depict inefficiencies within operations which may be attributed to employee performance. There is no investigation which has linked these results to employee performance which is associated with employee stress levels. However, studies in this field of stress and stress management have fallen short of covering organization communication (OC), organization social climate (OSC) and employee consultation (EC) as key constructs of stress management. Information on how the three could affect performance of employees is unknown. The main objective of the study was to investigate contribution of work place stress (WPS) management to employee performance (EP) at national hospital insurance fund (NHIF), Kenya. The specific objectives were to; establish contribution of OC to EP at NHIF, Kenya, determine contribution of OSC to EP at NHIF, Kenya and examine contribution of EC to EP at NHIF, Kenya. The study was guided by descriptive case study design. Population of study is 133 all the administrative staff at various levels in the hospital. Saturated sampling was used to pick all of them. Primary and secondary data was used. The latter from relevant documents, such as records, reports and publications relating to the hospital and other public health institutions and; the former from respondents using structured and semi structured questionnaire. Validity and reliability of questionnaire was tested on pilot data targeting 13 respondents with the former ascertained through expert assessment of instrument and the latter through Cronbachs Alpha analysis at a threshold of 0.7. Reliability coefficients stood at .825, .725 and .777 for OC to EP, OSC to EP and for EC to EP respectively. Results indicate means and standard deviations (SDs) of for OC to EP, OSC to EP and for EC to EP respectively as (M= 3.80, SD=.715), (M=4.02, SD= 1.005) and M=3.73,SD= .931). This means that contributions of OC to EP, OSC to EP and for EC to EP are high. The small SDs implies that the feelings about the contribution of three approaches in stress management above are close to mean. Conclusions are that OC, OSC and EC each has a role to play in employee performance. It is recommended that NHIF continue to improve on its OC, OSC and EC practices. The results may be used by policy makers involved in the hospital and the two levels governments in Kenya. Researchers may also pursue further research from this study.