Relationship between Dimensions of Safety  Climate and Unsafe Behaviors of the Construction Industry Workers

Sara  Tabanfar; Reza   Pourbabaki; Seyvan   Sobhani

doi:10.18502/aoh.v5i3.7164

Sara Tabanfar MSc, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public health, Qazvin University of Medical Science, Qazvin, Iran
Reza Pourbabaki PhD student, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
Seyvan Sobhani MSc, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public health, Qazvin University of Medical Science, Qazvin, Iran

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/aoh.v5i3.7164

Keywords: Unsafe behavior; Safety climate; Construction workers; Workplace safety

Abstract

Background: Construction industry has been ranked among the most dangerous industries worldwide due to the high number of accidents. The safety climate can be considered as a stimulus to reduce unsafe behaviors and thus reduction the accidents. This study was carried out to investigate the relationship between the dimensions of the safety climate and unsafe behavior of the construction workers in Tehran, Iran.

Methods: The present study is a descriptive cross-sectional research on 90 construction workers. Unsafe behaviors recorded using the American National Standards Institute method and interviews with the workers. The Safety Climate was measured using the UK health care Safety Climate Questionnaire. The descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used to summarize the findings and the Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to show the relationship between the variables. The SPSS software was used to analyze the data.

Results: The mean and standard deviation of safety climate score and unsafe behavior were (3.98+ 0.27) and (45.93 + 17.3), respectively. There was a significant relationship between unsafe behaviors and staff knowledge (r = -0.31 and P = 0.004). We also found relationship between unsafe behavior and safety climate score (r = -0.21 and P = 0.043).

Conclusion: The employees' knowledge was one of the most important components of workplace safety. Also, this component assigned itself the highest score, and increasing the score in this dimension of the safety climate can lead to reduction unsafe behavior. Finally, according to the results, as the safety climate among employees increases, unsafe behaviors will decrease, and productivity would be increase.