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Workplace environmental demands and energizers at two Kuwait oil companies

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Abstract

The Work Compatibility Improvement Framework was developed and used to assess the environmental and ergonomic work conditions at two oil companies in Kuwait: One is a government-owned company, while the other is a private subcontractor of the government-owned company. The work compatibility presents demand–energizer environmental factors that act upon the individuals in the workplace. The reliability coefficients were tested and considered good (0.752) and excellent (0.855) for two domain conditions environment and ergonomics, respectively. Results reveal that in all of the three regions of the government-owned company (north, southwest, east) the ‘overall’ compatibility data for the ‘environment’ is perceived to be poor. The ‘ergonomics’ compatibility data seem to be average in the southeast and west, while it is considered to be poor in the north. As for the private subcontractor, the perceived ‘environment’ is considered to be poor for two departments out of four (slickline and wellhead maintenance), while considered moderate for the remaining two (maintenance and crude/chemical handling). The ‘ergonomics’ compatibility is reported to be poor for crude/chemical handling and wellhead maintenance jobs; while the conditions seem to be moderate for the maintenance and slickline jobs. The major conclusion extracted from this study is that the oil sector organizations in Kuwait are not managed as ergo-environmental enterprises where there is disharmony in the ergonomics system, environmental system, and the ergo-environmental interface interaction. These gaps in the enterprise-wide systems have a significant impact on work productivity and the environment conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This research work was funded by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS)—Grant Number 2010111101. The author wishes to thank KFAS for funding this project and thank Dr. Ash Genaidy for his consultancy services and use of the Demand–Energizer Instrument (DEI).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment and Life Sciences Research Center (ELSRC), Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, P.O. Box 24885, 13109, Safat, Kuwait

    A. Al-Hemoud

  2. Techno Economics Division (TED), Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, P.O. Box 24885, 13109, Safat, Kuwait

    W. Behbehani

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  1. A. Al-Hemoud
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  2. W. Behbehani
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Correspondence to A. Al-Hemoud.

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Editorial responsibility: Mohamed Fathy Yassin.

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Al-Hemoud, A., Behbehani, W. Workplace environmental demands and energizers at two Kuwait oil companies. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 14, 983–992 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-016-1194-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-016-1194-x

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