| dc.description.abstract | HIV/AIDS is today acknowledged as a global health problem. Many organisations
today acknowledge the challenge posed by the pandemic to their profitability and to
the productivity of their employees. In response, many organisations have put in
place policies to reduce the impact of the threat that HIV/AIDS poses. In ICRC, the
organisation has adopted the use of social marketing campaigns to promote
behaviour change and to encourage people to speak openly about HIV/AIDS. It
was considered important to conduct a study to determine the factors that influence
the adoption rate among the employees of ICRC. The objectives of the research
were to establish the adopter categories of ICRC employees, determine the relative
factors that influence adoption in an employer driven HIV/AIDS campaign among
employees in ICRC and establish whether these factors vary according to the
hierarchical level and geographical location of the employees.
This was a survey research which sampled a total of 125 employees of International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They were selected from the staff records
using stratified random sampling. A semi structured questionnaire was used
whereby 47 staff members completed the questionnaire. Data was analyzed using
mean scores, standard deviation and percentages.
It was concluded that promotion, price and information were the main influencers of
adoption of new behaviors. These were followed closely by product, place and
motivation. Culture was found to have the least influence. The staff indicated varying
extents to which various measures influence the adoption of new behaviors. Most of
the variables had high standard deviations indicating notable variations across
groups. The findings indicate that that several factors influence behavior change to
a large extent. These include:- benefits of new behavior, HIV/AIDS workshops,
anticipated feelings of pride and joy from new behavior, increased understanding of
the dangers of current behavior, lunch time talk shows, video-shows, fear of death
and educational pamphlets.
It can also be concluded that while the factors vary with hierarchical level and
geographical location of staff. The variation was not significant. Of the two
hierarchical level was found to be more of a discriminator than location. Most of the
challenges were related to staff resistance to change, peer educators competence dishonesty,
educators lack role awareness, lack of resources and lack of support
from expatriate staff.
It was recommended that ICRC should increase the level of promotion element to
create awareness on the need to change. Staff segmentation in the social marketing
was recommended to be more effective in targeting. Peer educators need to be
educated on the need to be educated to show empathy to staff. The researcher
suggested future research on measure effectiveness and impact of promotions,
track actual behavior and experimental research to find out the best approaches.
Research covering expatriate employees and qualitative research were also
recommended. | en |
