After the
implementation of the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act in Fiji, larger
organisations mainly managed to enforce the required section of the Act into
their organisations through incorporation and amendment of policies and
procedures, whereas Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) still struggle with
basic administrative requirements and arising OHS issues. They face a variety
of issues including OHS. Hence, their priority largely shifts to operation and
smooth running of the businesses. The OHS issues are quite visible as the SMEs
play a pivotal role in the Fijian economy, where more than half of the
population are employed by the SMEs. This research is focused in the area of
OHS in SMEs. A mixed method research was used to get the perspective of the
participants for better understanding of the subject where both, qualitative
and quantitative analysis were done to derive conclusions. For qualitative
sampling, there were 20 participants including the employers and the employees,
whereas for quantitative sampling, a total of 53 people including the employers
and employees participated. For data collection, employers and employees from
different companies in Ba, Fiji was selected. The results showed that for this
research, qualitative methods gave better perspective of the participants about
OHS conditions after which the solutions/recommendations were derived.
Therefore, this study can be used for further research in the area to promote
continuous improvements in the SMEs.
