Defining and Measuring Safety Climate: A Review of the Construction Industry Literature.

Safety climate measurements can be used to proactively assess an organization's effectiveness in identifying and remediating work-related hazards, thereby reducing or preventing work-related ill health and injury. This review article focuses on construction-specific articles that developed and/or measured safety climate, assessed safety climate's relationship with other safety and health performance indicators, and/or used safety climate measures to evaluate interventions targeting one or more indicators of safety climate. Fifty-six articles met our inclusion criteria, 80% of which were published after 2008. Our findings demonstrate that researchers commonly defined safety climate as perception based, but the object of those perceptions varies widely. Within the wide range of indicators used to measure safety climate, safety policies, procedures, and practices were the most common, followed by general management commitment to safety. The most frequently used indicators should and do reflect that the prevention of work-related ill health and injury depends on both organizational and employee actions. Safety climate scores were commonly compared between groups (e.g. management and workers, different trades), and often correlated with subjective measures of safety behavior rather than measures of ill health or objective safety and health outcomes. Despite the observed limitations of current research, safety climate has been promised as a useful feature of research and practice activities to prevent work-related ill health and injury. Safety climate survey data can reveal gaps between management and employee perceptions, or between espoused and enacted policies, and trigger communication and action to narrow those gaps. The validation of safety climate with safety and health performance data offers the potential for using safety climate measures as a leading indicator of performance. We discuss these findings in relation to the related concept of safety culture and offer suggestions for future research and practice including (i) deriving a common definition of safety climate, (ii) developing and testing construction-specific indicators of safety climate, and (iii) focusing on construction-specific issues such as the transient workforce, subcontracting, work organization, and induction/acculturation processes.

Rethinking frontline health workers' safety performance in times of pandemic: the role of spiritual leadership.

This study examined the impact of spiritual leadership style on frontline health workers' safety performance through the mediating role of safety climate. Also, leader-member exchange (LMX) was examined as a moderator of the safety climate and safety performance relationship. Survey data from 582 frontline health workers in Ghana's Greater Accra and Ashanti regions were analyzed using AMOS version 23. Findings showed that spiritual leadership dimensions significantly influenced health workers' safety performance. Altruistic love and vision also significantly influenced safety climate. However, hope did not influenced safety climate. Moreover, safety climate had an impact onsafety performance dimensions. Furthermore, safety climate mediated the relationship between altruistic love, vision, and safety performance. However, safety climate did not mediate the relationship between hope and safety performance. Lastly, LMX moderated the positive effect of safety climate on safety compliance but not on safety participation. This study offers valuable insights for improving frontline health workers' safety performance during pandemics.

Construction safety performance measurement using a leading indicator-based jobsite safety inspection method: case study of a building construction project.

The construction industry is one of the hazardous industries all over the world. There have been continuous safety efforts on post-facto safety investigations and related corrective actions. However, to prevent future accidents, post-facto reports may not be able to provide comprehensive insights. Also, past literature pointed at limited proactive efforts to measure the current level of safety at the project. Therefore, this study introduced a leading indicator-based jobsite safety inspection (JSI) method to measure the project's safety performance. A total of 781 observations were reported in baseline and follow-up JSI on a real construction site. The study's findings highlighted an increase in safe behavior and conditions (SB&C) by reducing unsafe behavior (UB) and unsafe conditions (UC). Results confirmed a significant improvement in the safety performance index (SPI) of the case study from 39.07 to 67.47%. This study also investigated hazardous locations and weak safety dimensions for further SPI improvement.

The relational effects of perceived organizational support, fear of COVID-19, and work-related stress on the safety performance of healthcare workers.

This paper assesses the relational effects of perceived organizational support (POS), fear of COVID-19 (FOC-19), and work-related stress (WRS) on the safety performance of healthcare staff. The sample for this research was extracted from the University College Hospital (UCH) in the Oyo State of Nigeria. The participants were midwives, doctors, auxiliary services staff, and nurses who functioned in a COVID-19 hospital ward, fever or respiratory ICU, Auxiliary services, or outpatient clinics. This investigation espoused a clinical cross-sectional survey involving self-reported surveys. Of the 150 questionnaires distributed, 147 were fit for scrutiny and analyzed with Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 28). This paper established a relationship between POS and safety performance (SP). Besides, it showed a significant positive correlation between FOC-19 and SP. It further noted that work-related stress negatively relates to safety performance. Moreover, this study showed the significant joint strong influence of POC, FOC-19, and WRS on the safety performance of healthcare workers. Hence, healthcare institutions are encouraged to create adequate support for healthcare workers, particularly during a global health crisis. Government and healthcare institutions should also develop an awareness program on the danger and consequences of getting infected by the virus or infecting other significant others. This will increase the fear of COVID-19 and, consequently, health workers' safety performance. Besides, it is recommended that the management of healthcare institutions provides a proper work structure and schedule to help reduce workloads, consequently reducing WRS, as lowering it improves healthcare workers' safety performance.

Shipbreaking in Bangladesh: Organizational responses, ethics, and varieties of employee safety.

INTRODUCTION: The dismantling of large ocean-going ships at the end of their productive use, or shipbreaking, has a poor reputation for employee safety in some developing countries. India and Bangladesh have recently come to dominate the global shipbreaking industry in terms of the tonnage of scrapped and recycled ships and the work is reportedly hazardous, posing significant ethical and practical risks to employee health and safety. This study aims to investigate the veracity of this reputation by identifying how different shipbreaking firms manage workplace safety, and their reasons for doing so. METHODS: Drawing on in-depth case-based research at three shipbreaking firms in Chittagong, Bangladesh, data were collected from governmental representatives, industry experts, and NGO's through interviews, site observations, and industry reports. Safety performance data (number of injuries and fatalities) were collected between 2014 and 2019 and verified from different sources. RESULTS: In contrast to uniformly poor outcomes, the findings show better but uneven practices of workplace safety among the three shipbreaking firms, a phenomenon that we describe as 'varieties of employee safety.' The better performing shipbreaking firms on safety outcomes had higher managerial commitment towards improving safety, provided personal protective equipment (PPE) and training, adopted formal management systems such as external certification, and had more robust management processes concerning workplace safety in place. CONCLUSIONS: Management agency or choices towards strengthening workplace safety can positively influence safety performance outcomes in Bangladesh shipbreaking firms. We also contend that there is a close relationship between management ethics and occupational risk management in the workplace. This is a relatively novel perspective for health and safety research. Practical applications: Our empirical insights challenge common assumptions that safety practices in the shipbreaking industry in developing nations like Bangladesh are homogenous and consistently of low standard. This provides policymakers, the media, and safety practitioners with the opportunity to showcase best practices, whilst also identifying how safety in shipbreaking can be further improved for firms that are poor in their safety performance.

Safety Performance Assessment of Construction Sites under the Influence of Psychological Factors: An Analysis Based on the Extension Cloud Model.

Psychological hazards within organizational structures of construction sites are difficult to detect and can have significant negative impacts on safety performances when such hazards erupt. At present, most safety performance assessment models for construction sites ignore psychological factors. Therefore, in order to reveal psychological hazards within construction site organizations and to avoid damage caused by psychological hazards to safety performances, this paper evaluates the safety performances of construction sites by focusing on leader-member exchange ambivalence as the main trigger point. The evaluation system and evaluation criteria are established through three aspects: building scale, emotional orientation, and stability factors. The hierarchical analysis method, game theory, and extension cloud model are combined to make evaluation results more objective and credible. Moreover, a construction project with high technical requirements, high investment, and complex construction conditions (defined as a complex project) and an ordinary construction project with low technical difficulty and simple construction conditions (defined as a general project) were selected for analysis. The evaluation results indicate that both complex projects and general projects have safety hazards regarding psychological orientations. Finally, this paper makes some suggestions from three aspects: management system and corporate culture, building site intelligence, and social opinion to improve the safety performances of construction sites. The evaluation results are the same as actual operation results, which verify that models proposed in this paper can be used for safety performance evaluations of actual construction projects and provide help for managers to grasp overall safety levels.

Safety culture and systems thinking for predicting safety competence and safety performance among registered nurses in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Medical errors are a worldwide concern and the contribution of nurses' safety competence and performance to these errors is a high priority. It has been over 20 years since the first report of the need to address medical errors. New approaches are needed for enhancing safety competence and performance. AIMS: This study explored the relationships among systems thinking, educational level, safety culture, safety competence and safety performance among registered nurses working in medical and surgical units in Saudi Arabia. METHODS: A correlational cross-sectional design with a convenience sample of 84 registered nurses was used. RESULTS: Systems thinking predicted 16% of safety knowledge (F[2, 81] = 7.61, P = 0.001), while safety culture, baccalaureate education and completion of safety training predicted 19% of safety skill (F[3, 78] = 2.80, P = 0.001). A safety culture that promoted learning from mistakes predicted 15% of safety performance measured based on nurses' self-report of the number of errors in the past 3 months (F[3, 75] = 2.86, P = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: Professional development including systems thinking and safety training are the necessary next steps for nurses. In addition, policy changes facilitating organisations to support learning from mistakes will contribute to reducing medical errors.

Agility and Safety Performance among Nurses: The Mediating Role of Mindful Organizing.

This study aimed to assess the impact of workforce agility on private hospital nursing staff's safety behavior with the mediating role of mindful organizing. This study was cross-sectional. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 369 nursing staff. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to check the internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and hypotheses testing. For mediation analysis, the bootstrapping technique was used. Our findings suggested that workforce agility is the possible predictor of mindful organizing, as all of these dimensions have a positive impact on mindful organizing. Reference to safety performance sub-dimensions, proactivity, adaptability, and resilience had a positive significant impact on (a) safety compliance, and proactivity had a positive impact on (b) safety participation. Further, mindful organizing was also found to be positively associated with safety performance. Evidence for mediation between workforce agility and safety performance was also observed. Proactivity, adaptability, and resilience can enhance safety performance for the nursing staff. Workforce agility can also help the organization to attain mindful organizing, which will help them to achieve operational excellence, whereas in the past, high-reliability organizations were mainly found practicing mindful organizing. This study demonstrated the key impact of workforce agility and mindful organizing on safety behaviors directly and indirectly.

Safety Performance in Acute Medical Care: A Qualitative, Explorative Study on the Perspectives of Healthcare Professionals.

Healthcare professionals need specific safety performance skills in order to maintain and improve patient safety. The purpose of this study is to get a deeper understanding of healthcare professionals' perspective in acute care on the topic of safety performance. This study was conducted using a qualitative approach. Healthcare professionals working in nursing were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Using content analyzing, categories were identified which present aspects of safety performance; subcategories were developed deductively. A total of 23 healthcare professionals were interviewed, of which 15 were registered nurses, five were nursing students and three were pedagogical personnel. Nine (39.1%) were <30 years old, 17 (73.9%) were female, and 9 (39.1%) had a leadership function. Results highlight the importance of safety performance as a construct of occupational health rather than of patient safety, and the role of the organization, as well as the self-responsibility of healthcare professionals. Healthcare professionals should be more conscious of their role, have a deeper understanding of the interaction of individual, team, patient, organization and work environment factors.

Multi-dimensional model for determining the leading performance indicators of safety management systems.

BACKGROUND: Health and safety performance measurements aimed to provide information on the progress and current situation of organizational strategies and activities. OBJECTIVES: We developed a model to determine and select safety key performance indicators in order to assess safety management systems. METHODS: This study has been designed in six steps aiming at defining a model of leading performance indicators (LPIs) and selecting key performance indicators (KPIs) using the AHP method. RESULTS: According to the results analysis, 116 structural and operational indicators were defined based on the components of the OHSAS 18001 management system. For this purpose, 19 structural, 27 operational and 33 active KPIs were selected by AHP and BN techniques. CONCLUSION: Development of LPIs is influenced by various organizational, managerial, and operational factors. LPIs extracted from the components of the OHS-MS deployed in an organization are often passive and cannot show the changes in the safety status of a workplace in a short period. The model presented in this study was designed with an emphasis on extraction of active and operational indicators, as they were capable of detecting performance changes in construction industries.

An intervention significantly improve medical waste handling and management: A consequence of raising knowledge and practical skills of health care workers.

OBJECTIVE: Health-care waste has not attended much attention in developing countries. Staff is involved in cleaning and collect waste may often be at greater risk due to their less education and training. The current intervention study was conducted to improve knowledge and practice skills for medical waste handlers in some selected hospitals of Alexandria, Egypt. METHODS: An intervention study was conducted on medical waste handlers from some selected hospitals who accepted to participate in the study in the period of May 2015 to June 2016. A predesigned questionnaire was developed to measure knowledge, skills, and practice on medical waste management pre- and post-intervention. RESULTS: Analysis of pre-intervention data revealed that 9.6%, 80.8%, and 9.6% of participants had high, moderate, and low knowledge levels, respectively. Whereas post-intervention, data revealed that 97.3%, 2.2%, and 0.5% of workers had high, moderate, and low knowledge levels, respectively. A significant increase in knowledge after the intervention was detected among all knowledge items except in four items which were related to the necessity to segregate medical waste, knowledge of color coding system for segregation, disposal of general waste in black bags and disposal of infectious waste in red bags. Regarding practice of waste handlers, 80% were in poor practice category pre-training and changed to 0.8% post-training; 1.1% were in good practice category and increased to 92.1% post-training. CONCLUSION: The current findings emphasize the role of educative skill-raising training in enhancing knowledge and practice skills of medical waste handlers.

Determinants of safety outcomes and performance: A systematic literature review of research in four high-risk industries.

INTRODUCTION: In spite of increasing governmental and organizational efforts, organizations still struggle to improve the safety of their employees as evidenced by the yearly 2.3 million work-related deaths worldwide. Occupational safety research is scattered and inaccessible, especially for practitioners. Through systematically reviewing the safety literature, this study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of behavioral and circumstantial factors that endanger or support employee safety. METHOD: A broad search on occupational safety literature using four online bibliographical databases yielded 27.527 articles. Through a systematic reviewing process 176 online articles were identified that met the inclusion criteria (e.g., original peer-reviewed research; conducted in selected high-risk industries; published between 1980-2016). Variables and the nature of their interrelationships (i.e., positive, negative, or nonsignificant) were extracted, and then grouped and classified through a process of bottom-up coding. RESULTS: The results indicate that safety outcomes and performance prevail as dependent research areas, dependent on variables related to management & colleagues, work(place) characteristics & circumstances, employee demographics, climate & culture, and external factors. Consensus was found for five variables related to safety outcomes and seven variables related to performance, while there is debate about 31 other relationships. Last, 21 variables related to safety outcomes and performance appear understudied. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of safety research has focused on addressing negative safety outcomes and performance through variables related to others within the organization, the work(place) itself, employee demographics, and-to a lesser extent-climate & culture and external factors. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: This systematic literature review provides both scientists and safety practitioners an overview of the (under)studied behavioral and circumstantial factors related to occupational safety behavior. Scientists could use this overview to study gaps, and validate or falsify relationships. Safety practitioners could use the insights to evaluate organizational safety policies, and to further development of safety interventions.