The effect of human capital investment and motivation on miners’ productivity at a South African Platinum mine

Abstract: Human capital investment and employee motivation are mechanisms that mining companies can use to enhance labour performance, improve organizational productivity, optimise profitability, and achieve long-term competitive advantage. This paper investigates the effects of human capital investment and motivation on mineworkers’ labour productivity at a South African Platinum mine. This study adopted a quantitative research strategy. A structured questionnaire was used to survey (n = 292) miners. SPSS version 23.0 was performed to measure the relationship between miners’ perception of subsets of human capital investment and motivation versus identified key production variables from two distinctive reefs – the Upper Ground (UG2) Reef and Merensky reef. The statistical findings corroborated the two hypotheses tested