Mental Health and Job Performance of Garments Workforce in Bangladesh

Abstract

Manpower is the most significant investment in any institution. In this context, addressing employees’ mental health is a crucial responsibility of the organisation. Hence, the present study aims at inspecting the relationship between employees’ mental health and job performance of the garments workforce. Around 100 employees from different garments factories situated in the city of Dhaka were selected purposively for the research and 2 standardised measures – General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg & Williams, 1988) and Employees Job Performance Scale (Wiedower, 2001) – and a personal information form were administered. Further, to analyse the research data, both descriptive and inferential statics were employed by using the statistical package SPSS. The findings revealed that job performance was significantly and negatively linked to the mental health problem of the garments workforce, while among the mental health components, only somatic problems was significantly associated with their job performance. Additionally, no significant discrepancy was observed in the mental health and job performance of the garments workforce based on their gender and age. Further, regression analysis revealed that among all the mental health constructs (i.e., somatic problems, anxiety and sleep problems, social functioning, and depression), somatic problems was the strongest significant predictor of job performance; variation in job performance was accounted for by the joint linear influence of somatic problems, anxiety and sleep problems, social functioning, and depression. Therefore, it can be concluded that the workforces’ performance is influenced by their overall mental health status.

Keywords: Mental Health, Job Performance, Garments Workforce

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