I also want to express my gratitude to the individuals who helped me and made it possible for me to complete this study. Finally, thank you to UKZN, Graduate School of Business & Leadership for the opportunity to enroll on the MBA programme.
Introduction
- Introduction
- Motivation of the study
- Focus of the study
- Problem statement
- Research questions
- Research objectives
- Conclusion
The research questions were formulated to examine what types of safety cultures combined with organizational values and practices affect safety performance. To assess the extent to which non-human factors (the work environment) affect employee safety performance.
Literature review
Introduction
Literature review framework
Organisational culture
Organisational climate
Corporate safety culture
One of the characteristics that build a positive safety culture is the organization's response to unsafe behavior. A wide range of definitions of safety culture take into account shared values, beliefs and attitudes of the group.
Safety climate
Wachter and Yorio (2013) Risk level, attitude, importance of training, safety personnel status, effects of safe behavior on promotion.
Positive safety culture
- Error tolerance
- Situational factors: Equipment design
The effectiveness of the reporting culture is highly dependent on the organization's fault tolerance. The equipment designer must always consider the safety of maintenance personnel.
Types of errors
- Violations versus errors
If a person knowingly brings his cell phone to the device to receive calls, it is a clear violation and violations should not be tolerated. Error Reduction: This strategy allows for direct intervention at the source of human error by a method of eliminating or reducing contributing factors to the error.
Safety leadership
Questionnaire related to safety culture practices and values
2010) adopted a safety culture model to learn five safety values and practices that they believe are related to safety performance, as previously shown in several safety culture studies. Research by Hofmann (2011) and Diaz (1997) showed that safety climate is the initiator of the development of appropriate questionnaires about the practices and values of organizational safety culture. The study examined the relationship between accident rates and the safety climate for an airport ground handling organization.
The questionnaire was administered to operators, managers, airport authorities and ground handling service companies in Spain. The most important dimension of safety culture identified was company policies, which accounted for 38% of the variance in safety culture. The organization's emphasis on productivity rather than safety accounted for 6.4% of variance in safety culture.
According to F(2,56) p < 0.1, a significant difference in the level of safety was observed for the three companies.
Conceptual framework
Several culture models have been selected for a conceptual framework due to the lack of empirical research distinguishing between safety outcomes and corresponding types of safety culture. Most research shows that organizational culture is shaped by certain organizational practices (Bamsteiner, 2011; Guldenmud, 2013; Hecker et al., 2014). Cabrera (2007) points to five organizational practices that are most significant in safety culture research.
The competing values framework by Cameron and Quinn can be useful in organizational analysis, in the analysis of organizational change and in guiding practitioners in carrying out organizational development interventions”. The theoretical structure of assumptions (conceptual framework) that supported this study clarified the safety culture practices and value developments that served as diagnostic tools to examine the current organizational safety culture state of ImproChem. Supportive culture is recognized through employee cooperation, involvement and team building as means of encouraging organizational safety commitment.
An innovative safety culture is recognized by its flexibility to change, job design, reward system and work procedures to ensure safety improvement as employees provide feedback on where change is needed. Goal-oriented culture is characterized by clear safety goals and expectations accompanied by relative safety rewards.
Conclusion
It is still not clear whether the referred independent variables are suitable predictors of safety performance. Very little study has been done to investigate which variables contribute to specific cultural performance. Therefore, the current study examined independent variables that go beyond procedures and policies to include individual and organizational values and practices.
Based on the organizational culture theory, the study investigated the missing link between types of safety culture and safety outcome predictors. The next chapter contains the research methodology, detailed information regarding the on the population, sample size, questionnaire design will be given.
Research methodology
- Introduction
- Research design methods
- Location of the study
- Population and sample selection
- Data-collection strategy
- Questionnaire design
- Validity and reliability
- Administration of questionnaire
- Data analysis
- Conclusion
The questionnaire was sent to the entire population of 395 respondents to eliminate selection and sampling bias in the survey. The questionnaire was more focused on questions that allowed the respondents to express their answers using a five-point Likert scale. A total of 36 closed questions and two open questions were developed for the survey and the questionnaire was administered electronically.
The consent form was attached to the questionnaire to ensure that the respondents' anonymity was well maintained. The questionnaire was sent out on 21 May 2015 and respondents were given three weeks to respond. The researcher chose to use quantitative data collection methods for the research because of the advantages of the quantitative.
The entire population was selected as a sample size and the questionnaire was used as the survey instrument. The piloting of the questionnaire was done to ensure that the questions were clear and understandable before they were administered.
Presentation of the results
Introduction
Survey statistics report
25.8% of respondents believe that work occasionally leaves them little time to think about security. More than 60% of respondents indicated that the tools they use are always in good condition. In response to this statement, 60% of respondents indicated that this is always the case.
As shown in Figure 4.10, the majority (84%) of respondents positively indicated that they receive adequate SHE training at ImproChem. The results of the Hazard Assessment Tool (HAT) booklet show that nearly 40% of respondents felt they were always compliant, as shown in Figure 4.13. 33% of the respondents believed that the management often removed such obstacles, while 4.84% thought that they did so occasionally.
Of the responses, 8% of respondents indicated that they were never compliant, these employees might. More respondents indicated that they always discussed safe practices and associated hazards than respondents who indicated that they did so often. A similar finding was also found at ImproChem, where 15% of respondents indicated that they see a benefit in concealing security flaws.
70% of respondents indicated that they fear making safety mistakes – this may be due to a culture of blame and punishment.
Demographics
Objectives
- Objective 1: the extent to which non-human factors (working environment) influence employee safety
- Objective 3: To evaluate employees’ level of compliance with ImproChem SHEQ requirements
- Objective 4: The evaluate the extent to which employees take ownership of the ImproChem SHE
As shown in Figure 4.4, more than 50% of the respondents felt that work gives them enough time to think about matters related to safety. The majority of respondents (56%) indicated that they were always compliant with the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) records, as shown in Figure 4.14.20% indicated that they were often compliant, 13% were occasionally, 2.42 and % indicated that they were never compliant. The EMPRO contingency plan was not applicable to 27% of respondents. 12% of respondents indicated that they are often compliant, 10% occasionally and 8% of respondents are never compliant.
Site risk assessment (SRA) was always met by a slight majority of respondents (50.8%) as indicated in figure 4.17. Figure 4.17 also shows that almost 18% of the respondents felt that they often complied, 7.3% sometimes complied, while almost 5% never complied. This was followed by 30.7% of respondents who indicated that they often comply and 3 participants said that they sometimes comply. The majority of respondents (54%) indicated that they always use judgment and remain vigilant for underlying causes of unsafe acts and unsafe conditions (Figure 4.22). This was followed by 40% who indicated that they often complied and 4% indicated that they sometimes complied.
As illustrated in Figure 4.25, the majority (58.87%) of the respondents indicated that their senses are always heightened when doing their jobs. As can be seen in the figure, respondents felt that management always values employee safety above all else. 26% of participants indicated that management often made employee safety a priority. In total, 55% of respondents felt that management always responds to their safety concerns in a timely manner and 29% felt that management often responds in a timely manner (Figure 4.30).
At least 50% of respondents remained neutral on statement 6c, "People are known for their safety performance."
Discussion
- Introduction
- Role of the work environment (non-human factors)
- Employee understanding of ImproChem SHEQ requirements
- Employees compliance with ImproChem SHEQ requirements
- Employees commitment to ImproChem safety programs
- Management level of support: Motivation and safety rewards
- Organisational safety culture: Dissimilarities in organisational safety cultures
- Conclusion
A 5-point Likert scale ranging from never (1) to always (5) was used to assess the impact of the work environment. Of the respondents, 25% also indicated that there were times when emergency procedures were not available. Among respondents, 3.2% indicated that they were unaware of some of ImproChem's safety improvement programs, while 7% indicated that they had not received adequate safety training.
Safety compliance was measured using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from never (1) to always (4). The results in Chapter 4 (figure 4.13) showed that 40% of respondents felt that they always complied with the rules and 9% of respondents. Employees indicated that they never complied with the HAT booklet. To measure employee ownership of the ImproChem SHE programs and commitment to improving organizational safety, a 5-point Likert scale was used, ranging from never (1) to always (5). 16% of employees do not take the time to review their procedures, which may be due to the lack of available safe working procedures for certain activities.
A total of 15.32% of the respondents indicated that there are no rewards associated with achieving a good safety record, while other respondents indicated that it is rare that management rewards safety performance. More detailed recommendations of the study based on the findings are given in the next chapter.
Conclusion and recommendations
- Introduction
- Conclusion
- Limitations
- Recommendations
- Implementation of recommendations to solve the research problems
- Recommendations for future studies
- Conclusion
The main limitation was achieving TRIR per department to assess safety performance and link it to the safety culture per department. Synergy in the safety culture must exist where the SHEQ department can clearly communicate SHE goals and track safety performance. Safety culture theories emerging from the literature review were then applied to assess the impact of various factors on safety performance.
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