The findings also show that there is a moderate positive rela-tionship and significant impact of the perception of occupational health and safety management on the normative commitment of employees. This also affirms the assertion of Cooper [14] that, in order for management to develop loyalty among employees, especially those working in highly hazardous organizations, the health and safety of these employees must be a top management priority. According to Meyer and Allen [33], normative commit-ment may be developed when an organization incurs significant costs in providing employment such as investing in health and safety training for employees. Acknowledgment of such an in-vestment on the part of employees could create an imbalanced relationship and cause employees to feel obliged to reciprocate by devoting themselves to the organization until the cost has been paid [47,48]. Normative commitment has been found to be a sig-nificant predictor of employees’ intention to quit [49]. Hence, the more employees feel safe on the job, the more they will feel obliged and loyal to their organization and reduce turnover.
The results of this study further indicated that there is also a moderate positive and significant association between occupa-tional health and safety management and continuance commit-ment. Thus, employees’ perception of the management of health and safety in the organization influences their decision to stay in the organization and to contribute favorably to the organization. Where employees perceive the management of health and safety in the organization to be appropriate and adequate, they are more likely to have a continuing relationship with the organization knowing that their health and safety are secured in the organiza-tion. By contrast, where they perceive that their health and safety is under threat through their evaluation of the management of health and safety in the organization, they tend to exhibit withdrawal behaviors such as absenteeism and high turnover. This finding is consistent with that of Sinclair et al [39], who found that, when organizations failed to address poor working conditions such as excessive noise, abusive supervision, poor visibility and dusty conditions, there was a decrease in employees’ continuance commitment to the organization. Thus, employees judge the cost of staying with their organization to exceed the cost of leaving. In other words, to get devoted employees to work within highly hazardous organizations such as the mines, there is a need to provide effective safety and health systems that safeguard em-ployees’ health and safety.