The Effect of Demographic Factors on Employee Productivity and Safety Programmmes in Oil and Gas and Construction Industries in the Niger Delta Area, Nigeria

The aim of this study was to examine how demographic variables affect employee productivity in the selected Oil & Gas and Construction companies in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Structured questionnaire was the research instrument administered to 390 employees by random sampling; while the selection of the Oil & Gas and construction companies was by purposive method. Demographic variables captured in the questionnaire included Gender, Age, Level of education, Marital status and Years of experience. The collated data were analyzed using Xlstat version 16 for descriptive statistics and reliability test using Cronbach alpha. Also, Z-test and Analysis of Variance were carried out to check for significant difference in the employee productivity across the demographic variables. Principal Component Analysis was further used to understand the relationship between the demographic variables and safety programs. The result from the study showed that female had slightly higher employee productivity than male employee. The overall productivity might be slightly geared toward cognitive diversity rather than physical work demand. The result further showed that there was no significant difference in the employee productivity with respect to gender. Similarly, the finding from the study showed that employee between the ages of 42 to 49 and workers with 17 - 24 years of working experience had the highest employee productivity. While workers between the ages of 18 to 25 and workers with experience above 25 years had the least employee productivity. No significant difference was found in the ages and working experience with respect to productivity. However, significant difference was observed in the marital status with respect to productivity. Single and divorced workers had significantly higher employee productivity than their counterpart. Given that workers above 50 years also showed high productivity, it is recommended that pairing employees above the age of 50 years and younger workers (below 25) will be beneficial in increasing the overall productivity in the company. However, the need for succession planning and knowledge transfer as they approach retirement should be carried out by the companies.