A Survey of the Extent to Which Publicly Quoted Companies in Kenya Consider Hiv/aids in Strategy Formulation

Abstract

Most in the world have come to realize that my IAIDS is not just a health problem, but it reaches into every comer of society and has become an economic and development problem that threatens human welfare, socio-economic advances, productivity, social cohesion and businesses. Companies are increasingly incurring a wide range of direct and indirect costs due to mY/AIDS and related illnesses and deaths. This study sought to find out how businesses are responding to the problem. It had three objectives: to establish if Kenyan businesses are considering my IAIDS in strategy formulation; to establish which factors influence companies incorporating my IAIDS in strategy formulation, for those that do so; and to establish if there is a relationship between consideration ofHIYI AIDS in strategy formulation and profitability of a company. Data for the study was collected through a questionnaire, which was administered to fortysix companies. Both closed and open-ended questions were used to gather data. Twentyone companies responded. The results indicated that whereas most companies acknowledged that HIY/AID'~ is a threat to business, they and do not see it as a very serious problem because 60% indicated that they estimate its cost to be 25% or less, 15% thought the cost to be negligible and 25% do not know the cost. As a result, 75% talk of carrying out HIY planning but actually do not factor it in when they are formulating their strategies. Those that take mY/AIDS into account when formulating strategy indicated they do so as a " . result of decreased productivity, rising insurance cover and premiums, loss of key staff to my IAIDS, higher demand for recruitment and training, and a desire to contribute to society welfare. v The study concluded that businesses do not seem to have woken up to the realization that mY/AIDS is a serious business problem. This is because 50% of the respondents indicated that they did not know what percentage of their staff are HIV -positive. Another 25% thought that either 5% or less of their staff have an infection rate of 5-9% or less. One would have expected that with HIY/ AIDS being such a serious problem as statistics indicate, then businesses would not be spared and would find out what percentage of their staff are infected and then take drastic measures to counter its effects. They could either be underestimating the impact of HIV/AIDS or are reacting very slowly to it Until they give the pandemic the attention it deserves, they will continue ignoring it when formulating their strategies.