CONSTRUCTION WORKERS’ SKILL DEVELOPMENT: A STRATEGYFOR IMPROVING CAPACITY AND PRODUCTIVITY IN SOUTHAFRICA

• Main Authors: Orando, M, Isabirye,A.K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Social Sciences Research Society 2018-01-01
• Series: International Journal of Economics and Finance Studies
• Online Access: http://www.sobiad.org/eJOURNALS/journal_IJEF/archieves/IJEF_2018_1/m-orando.pdf

This paper examines construction workers’ skills development as a strategy forbuilding capacity and improving work productivity in South Africa. Whilst thereare other factorsthatcould influence workers’ skills development, this studyfocused on human work skill behaviour factors in the construction industry. Adescriptive research methodologyusing emailedquestionnaires to collect data wasused. Collected datawereanalysed usingtwostatistical methods.The first oneusedthe meanvalues to establish data acceptance and the second, the relativeimportance index, was used grade the dataTwenty three factors, narrowed downto six mainbehaviourswere found to be significant in influencing constructionworkers’ capacity to improveproductivity. Thesixbehaviours includededucational backgrounds, attitude towards own skills development, workingconditions, the organisation’s role in enhancing employee capacity and goalsetting.Basedon the results of the study,it was recommended that constructionproject organisations could incorporate the identified skill development factors intheir organisations in order to build their skill capacity to improve constructionproductivity in South Africa. Italsowas recommended that, governments coulduse identified factors in their national strategies andpolicies for constructionworkers’ empowermentand productivity improvement to create wealth in thenational economy