The safety climate and its relationship to safety practices, safety of the work environment and occupational accidents in eight wood-processing companies

Abstract

Employees continuously observe their work environment and the actions of their fellow workers and superiors, and they use such observations as a basis for the creation of cognitive models associated with safety. These models regulate their actions in the workplace and thus have an influence on safety. This study attempts to define the structure of the safety climate as perceived by workers and the correlations between the safety climate, on the one hand, and the safety practices of the company, the safety level of the work environment and occupational accidents on the other. The variables used in this study were the same as those employed in two previous Finnish safety climate studies carried out in the plywood industry, shipyards, the forestry industry, building construction and stevedoring. The safety climate was measured by means of a questionnaire. Workers from four sawmills, two plywood factories and two parquet plants participated. The total number of participants was 508 in 1990 and 548 in 1993. The variables formed four factors, whose contents and reliabilities closely resembled the results obtained in the earlier studies. These results indicate that the structure of the safety climate among Finnish workers is quite stable. The safety climate correlated both with the safety level of the work environment and with the safety practices of the company, but the correlation between the safety climate and the safety of the work environment was stronger. This result differs from those of the previous studies, in which the safety climate was defined specifically in terms of an individual’s perceptions of the safety practices of the company and of the behavior of other employees. The two safety climate factors that described a company’s attitudes to safety and its safety precautions correlated with the accident rates. The better the safety climate of the company was, the lower was the accident rate. Four companies with an accident rate below the average for the wood-processing industry had a better safety climate than four similar companies with an accident rate above the average.

Introduction

In his review article, Lindell (1994) defined the safety climate in terms of the workers’ interpretations of features, events, and processes in the work environment that were relevant to their safety. This includes aspects of the organization that affect safety whether they are intended to have such impact or not. A number of safety climate dimensions have been identified. These include material factors (plant design, production equipment, personal protective equipment), policies/practices (safety priorities, training, enforcement, daily routines, housekeeping), safety-related conditions (work stress, social relations with co-workers), and the level of concern and action by different people in the workplace (management, supervisors, safety specialists, government inspectors, safety committees, and workers in general).

Seppälä (1992) studied the safety climate in the Finnish plywood industry, shipyards, the forestry industry and building construction. The results of the study indicated that the safety climate was dependent on four factors: (1) organizational responsibility; (2) workers’ concern about safety; (3) workers’ indifference with regard to safety; and (4) the level of safety precautions in the company.

This study attempted to define (1) the structure of the workers’ safety climate; (2) the relations between safety climate and a company safety practices; (3) the relations between safety climate and safety level of the work environment, and (4) the relations between safety climate and occupational accidents.