Articlegreen2004

Why do workers behave unsafely at work? Determinants of safe work practices in industrial workers.

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Occupational Health and Safety Research Occupational Health and Safety in Workplaces Occupational Health and Safety Management

Abstract

AIMS: To explore the relation between safety climate (workers' perceptions regarding management's attitudes towards occupational safety and health) and workers' behaviour at work. METHODS: Cross sectional survey of workers at the pottery industry in Castellon, Spain. Sampling was stratified by plant size and workers' gender, according to data on the working population at this setting. A total of 734 production workers were interviewed. Information was collected on safety climate and workers' behaviour towards occupational risks with a specific questionnaire. A safety climate index (SCI, scale 0-100) was constructed adding scores for each item measuring safety climate in the questionnaire. Workers' unsafe behaviour was analysed for the different safety climate index levels. RESULTS: Mean score for SCI was 71.90 (SD 19.19). There were no differences in SCI scores according to age, gender, education, children at charge, seniority at work, or type of employment. Small workplaces (<50 workers) showed significantly worse SCI (mean 67.23, SD 19.73) than the largest factories (>200 workers). Lower levels of SCI (SCI <50) were related to workers' unsafe behaviours (full/high accord with the statement "I excessively expose myself to hazards in my work", adjusted odds ratio ORa 2.79, 95% CI 1.60 to 4.88), and to lack of compliance with safety rules (ORa 12.83, 95% CI 5.92 to 27.80). CONCLUSIONS: Safety climate measures workers' perception of organisational factors related to occupational health and safety (for example, management commitment to risk prevention or priorities of safety versus production). In this study these factors are strongly associated with workers' attitudes towards safety at work. Longitudinal studies can further clarify the relation between safety climate and workers' behaviour regarding occupational safety and health.

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References

1980Safety climate in industrial organizations: Theoretical and applied implications.2000Hospital safety climate and its relationship with safe work practices and workplace exposure incidents 1986The use of a factor-analytic procedure for assessing the validity of an employee safety climate model 2000The safety climate and its relationship to safety practices, safety of the work environment and occupational accidents in eight wood-processing companies 1997Safety climate and attitude as evaluation measures of organizational safety 2000Safety climate, attitudes and risk perception in Norsk Hydro 1996Workplace organizational correlates of lost-time accident rates in manufacturing

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