SITUATIONAL AWARENESS AND EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT IN THE HEALTH SECTOR OF BAYELSA STATE EMPLOYEE IN THE HEALTH SECTOR BAYELSA STATE.”

: This study examined the relationship between situational awareness a dimension of Social Intelligence and Employee Commitment in the health sector of Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The research design adopted for this study is cross sectional survey research design. A total of 339 questionnaires were distributed out of which 313 questionnaires were retrieves of which 273 was found useable. The population of the study is made up of medical Doctors, Nurses, Laboratory Technicians, Pharmacists, Engineers and Administrative staff of the Federal Medical Centre YenagoaBayelsa State, numbering 2220. The study employed the Taro Yamen’s technique to arrive at the sample size of 339. Spearman’s Rank Order correlation coefficient was used for the bivariate analysis and partial correction was used for the multivariate analysis with the aid of SPSS 20.0. The findings revealed a highly significant level of relationship between Situational Awareness and Employee Commitment. In conclusion the study found out that situational awreness influences employee commitment and this enhances outcomes such as maintaining high performance standards and achieving high performance goals which is further enhanced by the culture of the organization. The study recommends that leadership in the health sector should apply social intelligence skills to connect with others in order to boost employees performance .


Introduction
Organisations in today's competitive world might not be able to optimize their performance unless employees are committed to organizations objectives and work as effective team members (Dixit and Bhati, 2012). It has been observed from studies that the Nigerian organisations lack committed employees and this has constituted a major problem in both the private and public sector in Nigeria (Okpara, 2004). Researchers have also found out that Nigerian workers degree of commitment is on the lower limit. (Ahiauzu and Asawo, 2009).
Furthermore, studies suggest that commitment level among the employees in the public sector in Nigeria is not impressive (Balogun, Oladipo, and Odekunle, 2010; Nwibere, and Emecheta, 2012: Balogun, Adetula, and Olowodunoye, 2013). Backing for this statement may be drawn from the evidence supported via the Nigerian Labour Congress in one of its annual reports in which it stated that there may be no statistical evidence to support the commensuration of productivity degree with the input of services rendered by the civil servants (NLC, 2012).
The Nigerian health sector is not excluded like many other countries health sector that is generally open to a degree of criticism or assessment by the people, especially in the aspect of performance or service delivery. The Nigerian setting is no exception as the health sector is infested by several criticisms ranging from low access to basic healthcare services, policy inconsistencies, inadequate sponsorship, the attendant infrastructural deficit, mind drain, struggle for supremacy amongst medical practitioners and the perpetual breach of collective bargaining agreements; all of these have instigated the argument for an inclusive technique (Oyewunmi and Oyewunmi 2014).
Social intelligence been one of the new areas in Psychology has attracted the attention of psychologists, psychiatrist and other experts in various fields such as organization and management. Social intelligence embraces an extensive expanse of skills characteristics and usually refers to inter-personal skills that transcend specific areas of previous knowledge such as intelligence and technical or professional skills. (Rezayee, and Khalizadeh, 2009:). In time past much emphasis has been laid on cognitive abilities while social intelligence aspect has been mostly ignored in organizational behaviour. (Brown 2005). Intelligence quotient has been considered as the primary index of achievement in life. Social intelligence has been defined as the ability to get along well with others and to get them to cooperate with you" Albert, (2004). It is also known as "people skills". It also involves a certain measure of self-insight and an awareness of one's very own perceptive and response styles.
Employees who are socially intelligent relate better with superior/subordinates in workplaces because of their interpersonal skills. Relationship in the workplace is critical to every organization be it public or private sector; it helps to reduce frustration amongst employees, low morale, low team spirit/shattered group cohesion and low job satisfaction. According to Albrecht, (2004), individuals gain knowledge or skills as they develop, mature and derive benefit in knowing how to relate with others.
Studies so far have laid much emphasis on the variable of social intelligence and other variables; for example Rathod, (2017) examined "social intelligence and personality among adolescence" in Rajkot city in India; Birknerova, Frankovsky and Zbihlejova (2013) investigated "social intelligence in the context of personality traits of teachers" in Slovakia; Baggiyam and Pakajam (2017) studied social intelligence in relation to academic achievement in Coimbatore district India; Patel (2017) conducted a study on "social intelligence among commerce and science college students" in vallabhvidyyanagar city India; With all the studies carried out by various scholars, little or no attention has been made on the situational awareness (a dimension of social intelligence) and Employee Commitment in the health sector of Nigeria. This has created a gap in literature, hence this study attempts to fill this gap. [3] 2. Literature Review

Situational Awareness
It is the "social radar" or the ability to read, understand situations and to interpret the behaviours of people in those situations, in terms of their possible intentions, empathize with them in these situations. It goes further to include the knowledge of the different dimensions of culture, been able to appreciate the view points of others, having functional insight of relating with people, having a respectful interest in other people which they intend to reciprocate, being able to find out when to speak and when not to speak, how and the excellent manner to manage situations. (Albretch 2006) Gilson (1995), posited that the concept of situational awareness was discovered during world war 1 by OswarldBoelke who recognised the importance of gaining an awareness of the enemy before the enemy gained a comparable awareness, and devised techniques for engaging in this.' This idea did not receive a great deal of interest in both the technical and academic literature till the late 1980's. It has turned to be a frequently talked about topic particularly within the aviation industry.
Bedny and Meister (1999), Situational awareness is the conscious dynamic reflection on the condition by a person. It allows for dynamic orientation to the condition, the possibility to ponder not only the past, present and future, but the likely features of the condition. The dynamic reflection consists of logical-conceptual, imaginative, conscious and unconscious components which allow people to build mental frameworks of external activities. Smith & Hancock (1995), Situational awareness is the invariant within the agent-environment structure that generates the temporary expertise and behaviour required to accomplish the goals intended by an arbiter of overall performance in the environment. Endsley (1988), Situational Awareness consequently requires comprehending vital elements in the environment (level 1 Situational awareness), discerning what those elements mean, especially when incorporated unitedly in relation to the goals of the organization, (level 2 Situational Awareness), and at the highest stage, a discernment of what will occur with the structure in time to come (level 3 situational awareness). These higher degrees of situational awareness allow leaders and managers to function in a prompt and efficacious manner.

Employee Commitment
Over the years, employee commitment has cumulated attention in Human Resource management, and it has become an important tool for forecasting employee loyalty, performance and the willingness to stay in an organisation. The definitions of commitment differ. Commitment, as defined by Oxford online dictionary, is a state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc. or an engagement or duty that limits freedom of action. Employee commitment may be described as the degree to which the employee feels dedicated to their organisation Akintayo (2010). It has been pointed out by studies that employee commitment has the potential to predict an assortment of organisational outcomes such as enhanced job performance, cut down turnover and withdrawal cognitions, smaller absenteeism rate, and increased organisational citizenship behaviour (Brown, Hillman and Okun, 2012).  [4] Zheng, (2010) depicts employee commitment as plainly employees' attitude to organisations. This definition is encompassing because employee attitude embraces various components. Ongori (2007) defined employee commitment as an affective response to the whole company and the level of bond or loyalty employees feel towards the organisation. Commitment is an influence that binds a person to a line of action applicable to one or more targets (Meyer and Herscovitch 2001). Binding means the sustenance of relationship with the commitment object and is seen as the most crucial result of commitment. (Meyer et al. 2002).

Situational Awareness and Employee Commitment
Situational awareness is one of the most critical features in any organisation. It is conceived as the internalised model of the state of the organisation, from which all decision making and action takes place. It is very necessary for leaders and mangers to maintain keen awareness of all that happens around the environment in which they operate. Having a high level of situational awareness can be seen as the most critical aspect of achieving successful performance in any organisation Managers must be cognizant with the state of affairs within the organisation by understanding the situational context that influences behaviour and choose the right schemes that are most probable to be successful. According to Eketu and Edeh, (2015), managers should respect employees' interest to have good situational awareness. This will inspire employees to demonstrate a positive attitude to work being influenced by the impression created by their superiors. Based on the foregoing the related hypotheses are stated as follows: Ho1 There is no significant relationship between situational awareness and affective commitment of employees of the health sector in Nigeria. Ho2 There is no significant relationship between situational awareness and continuance commitment of employees of the health sector in Nigeria. Ho3 Situational awareness has no significant relationship with normative commitment of employees of the health sector in Nigeria.

Methodology
This study adopted a survey approach with a population of 220 staff. A sample size of 339 was determined using Taro Yemen's technique. A total of 339 respondents were administered questionnaires out of which 313 were retrieved, but 273 questionnaires were found useable representing 81% of the sample size used for analysis of the study. The instrument used for data collection was the questionnaire. The questionnaire was classified into two section. Section A deals with the demographic date while section B comprised of respondent opinion concerning the study variables. The questionnaire adopted the 5-piont Likert scale rating. The scale used for measuring Situational Awareness was adopted from the work of Albretch (2006) and Goleman (2006). Employee Commitment was measured using Allen and Mayer (1990) the ECQ which was adapted for this study. The ECQ measured Affective Commitment, Continuance Commitment and Normative Commitment. The variables that were employed for this study were sourced from existing literature and had been pre-tested and validated in previous studies ( Albretch, 2006; Goleman, 2006; Allen and Mayer 1990). Therefore the variables had construct validity. Cronbach Alpha was used to test for reliability in our study. According to researchers (Bryman and Bell; Nunally 1978) an alpha level of 0.80 is generally accepted as a good level of internal reliability of the instrument, though an alpha level of 0.70 is also considered to be efficient. For test of reliability the following Cronbach Alpha Coefficient were obtained for our scales; Situational Awareness (0.0782), Commitment (0.726). Hence all our variables had internal reliability.
Frequencies and percentages were used to classify our demographic data. Our variables were subjected to univariate and bivariate analysis. Inferential statistics using Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient was used to establish the association between Situational Awareness and Employee Commitment.

Demographic Data Analysis
Analysis in this section focused primarily on the use of frequency, percentage and pie-chart distributions in the presentation of the data; this is founded on the distinct nature of the items, hence a nominal scaling. The result from our demographic data reveal a majority of the participants in the study are female (54.2%) in comparison with the male participants (45.8%). Distribution based on respondent age: indicate a higher percentage of the respondents were between the age range of 31-50years (43.6%); followed by those between 18 -30 years (32.6%) and lastly those between age 51-70years (23.8%). In terms of educational qualification the data indicates that most of the participants are holders of Bachelor degree and its equivalent (53.3%); this is followed by the number of participants with SSCE and its equivalent certificates (18.7%). Also Master degree and its equivalent amount to (7.3%) meanwhile NCE and its equivalent (16.8%) and with the least number having Doctoral certificates (3.7%). Data reveals respondent length of service in the health sector, staff within 1-10years amount to (49.8%); followed by staff within 11-20years length of service (26.7%) and finally those within 21years and above (23.4%).The data on staff position in the sector revealed Nursing officers as the highest (19.8%), Pharmacist (8.1%), admin staff and directors, deputy and assistant (7.7%) each, chief nursing officers (7.0%), health attendant and medical doctors (6.6%) each, Technical officers and Engineers (6.2%), clerks (5.9%), accounts (5.5%), Executive officers (5.1%), records (4.8%), inspection officers (4.4%), lab scientist (2.9%) and lastly operations and maintenance (1.8%). This indicates that most of the workers were highly educated in the Health sector in Nigeria. We obtain the following mean score for each variables using univariate analysis.  [6] construct examined the context and practice of situational awareness within the target health sector with indicators aimed at understanding the environment through indicators such as am able to perceive and understand my environment (x = 3.63); able to understand what will happen in the organization in few years to come (x = 3.29); interpret and integrate various factors in relation with the organization (x = 3.43) and effective attendance to issues timely (x = 3.58). The results affirm to all four indicators of situational awareness within the target organizations. The data on table 4.2 illustrates that there is a high level of affirmative (where x > 3.0) as regards the indicators of affective commitment which is a measure of employee commitment. The construct examined the context and practice of employee emotional attachment to their job within the health sector with items aimed at motivating employees through indicators such as accepting almost any type of job assignment in order to keep working for the organization (x = 3.25); finding individual values and organizational values in congruence (x = 3.29); understanding how individual job contributes to organization's goals and objectives (x = 3.61) putting extra effort to aid organization succeed (3.47); and ensuring good morale (x = 3.32). The results affirm to all four indicators of affective commitment within the health sector. The above data on table 4.3 describes the result for continuance commitment which is a measure of employee commitment. The results indicate substantial levels of agreement to the indicators of the construct where x > 3.0; hence the results show that respondents strongly affirm to the presence of continuance commitment by workers with indicators such as: working in this current profession is relevant to me (x = 3.66); changing my job now would involve a considerate sacrifice (x = 3.33); leaving the organization if I could (x = 3.10); working in this organization is not interesting (x = 3.05) and being afraid of the consequences of quitting my job without having another (x = 3.21).  [7] Hence all the five indicators have high rate of affirmative response indicating the presence of continuance commitment among the heath sector workers. Furthermore, the level of response dispersion is low for all indicators (SD <2.00). The data on table 4.11 illustrates that there is a high level of affirmative (where x > 3.0) as regards the indicators of employee normative commitment. The construct examined the context of employee normative obligation to the health sector with indicators aimed at expressing one's obligatory attachment to the organization through indicators such as I was taught to believe in the value of remaining loyal to one organization (x = 3.60); things were better in the days when people stayed in one organization for most of their careers (x = 3.27); people moving from one organization to another these days (x = 3.27) and believing loyalty is relevant to remain in an organization (x = 3.28). The results affirm to all four practices and indicators of continuance commitment within the organizations as also supported by the low disparity in response (SD <2.00). The statistical output on hypothesis one reveals that there is a significant relationship between situational awareness and affective commitment (where rho = .547** and p < 0.05) hence we find that situational awareness is strongly associated with employee affective commitment in the health sector and based on the decision rule of p < 0.05 for null rejection; we therefore reject the null hypothesis and restate that there is a significant relationship between situational awareness and affective commitment. The bivariate output on the second hypothesis reveals that situational awareness significantly relates to continuance commitment of employee (where rho = .617** and p < 0.05) hence we find that situational awareness strongly associate with employee continuance commitment and going by the decision rule of p < 0.05 for null rejection; we therefore reject the null hypothesis and restate that there is a significant relationship between situational awareness and continuance commitment in the health sector. The third hypothesis null was tested to examine the positive association between situational awareness and normative commitment of employee (where rho = .609**and p < 0.05) hence we find that situational awareness strongly influence employee normative commitment and standing on the decision rule of p < 0.05 for null rejection; we therefore reject the null hypothesis by restating that situational awareness significantly relates to employee normative commitment in the health sector in Nigeria.

Data Analysis and Results
[9]

Discussions on Findings
The result reveals situational awareness a dimensions of social intelligence and the measures of employee commitment carry high mean scores thus reflecting participants average perceptions of the variables and the practices of such within the health sector. The results show that participants view social intelligence as an important construct, tool or necessary practice which allows for total understanding of the individual self that forms the foundation for success in every human endeavour which, as put forward by Goleman (2006) brings about social relationship that have direct bearing on the outcome of our physical health.
The first hypothesis states that there is no significant relationship between situational awareness and affective commitment of employees in the health sector.
The bivariate analysis SPSS output revealed that there is significant relationship between situational awareness and affective commitment. This implies that as situational awareness increases, employee affective commitment also increases in the health sector.
The second hypothesis states that there is no significant relationship between situational awareness and continuance commitment of employee in the health sector. The bivariate analysis output revealed that there is strong relationship between situational awareness and employee continuance commitment. This implies that as situational awareness increases, employee continuance commitment also increases. This corroborates with the works of Albretch (2008), Eketu and Edeh (2015) who argued that individuals and or organisations with high sense of situational awareness creates the template of reciprocal behaviour among workforce which creates an atmosphere for positive attitude towards work.
The third hypothesis states that situational awareness has no significant relationship with normative commitment of employee in the health sector. The bivariate analysis output reveals that situational awareness strongly influences employee commitment.
It implies that situational awareness plays a very important role in employee normative commitment in the organisations. This implies that when an organisation understands the situational context that influences its employees' behaviour at workplace, such employee is obliged to certain conditions to reciprocate with kind attitude towards the organisation by rendering total commitment to achieve organisational success.
The bivariate results suggest that through effective application of social intelligence skill (situational awareness), the activities, dedication and commitment of employees' in the health sector maintain a measurable form of predictability and stability as an upshot of the situational context and level of communication among co-employee.

Conclusions of the Study
The following conclusions are therefore drawn from the discussion of findings above.
1) The study revealed that situational awareness has a positive influence on affective commitment. As situational awareness increases, employee affective commitment. [10] 2) The study found that there is strong relationship between situational awareness and employee continuance commitment. It brings to light the fact that organisations with high sense of situational awareness create the template of reciprocal behaviour among workforce which creates an atmosphere for positive attitude towards work. 3) It was found that situational awareness plays an extremely crucial role in employee normative commitment by influencing employee behaviour at the workplace.

Recommendations for the Study
As a result of the findings, summary and conclusions of the study, the following recommendations are herein proffered as ways in which employees' commitment in the health sector can be enhanced: 1) In order to achieve a high performance level in the health sector, leaders should ensure to apply the knowledge gained from their surrounding environment in order to influence employee's behaviour while choosing the right strategies as this will engender increase employees affection to their jobs. 2) The most important activity of a leader is to connect with others, therefore public health leaders should ensure to correct workers wrong doings in the right manner in order to spur employee's continuous dedication as well as commitment, since they are in better position to understand their employees, ability and self-confidence which forms the guide to decision making. 3) Individuals are known for reciprocal behaviour therefore, health workers should be given access to regular training in order to develop and increase their level of attachment to the job. This will give rise to increase commitment and dedication to duty.