Safe Work Environments: The Importance of Culture
New research illustrates the importance of understanding employee perceptions when developing safety action plans.
Posted: February 8, 2008
In an effort to promote safety, many organizations look to become a part of the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), developed to promote effective worksite-based safety and health.
Approval into VPP is OSHA’s (Washington, DC) official recognition of the outstanding efforts of employers
and employees who have achieved exemplary occupational safety and health records.
According to Department of Labor statistics, companies that participate in the VPP average 54 percent fewer injuries and illnesses and 60-80 percent lower lost-workday rates than other companies in their industries. As a result, the VPP Participants’ Association estimates that these sites have saved more than $1 billion since 1982.
We studied 16 manufacturing sites across seven companies (n = 3,159 employees) that have received official recognition from the VPP program and discovered that a number of factors separate these work cultures from other manufacturing groups responding to employee opinion surveys.
Specifically, employees working in sites recognized for safety excellence were more favorable than other manufacturing employees when asked if their area was a safe place to work (+8), the physical working conditions were satisfactory (+5), the company provided adequate safety training (+19), and employees received sufficient training to improve their skills (+7).
Differences were also found in employee opinion concerning Empowerment, Teamwork, Supervision, and Customer Focus. Employees working at VPP-recognized sites are significantly more favorable than employees working in other manufacturing jobs when responding to questions on each of these topics.
In another study, a North American automotive glass replacement company was interested in understanding the relationship between data collected in their annual employee opinion survey and documented rates of work-related injuries. To investigate, we used employee opinion data collected from 53 locations (n =1,204 employees) and the subsequent documented injury rates from those same locations one year later.
Our analysis revealed a number of employee opinion factors significantly correlated with documented rates of work-related injuries. Specifically, locations where employees were significantly more favorable when asked about Leadership (+7), Teamwork (+7), Customer Focus (+4), Quality (+4), Job Satisfaction (+7), Supervision (+3), Operating Efficiency (+4), Empowerment (+4), and Innovation (+4) were also locations with less frequent instances of documented rates of work-related
injuries.
As a result of the research, this organization is now in a position to develop detailed action plans designed to increase specific areas known to be significantly related to the occurrence of work-related injury.
The results of a three-year study for a top-five global petroleum company with operations in 180 countries that linked employee attitudes with the incidence of workplace accidents gives further support to our research with the VPP-recognized sites. The study represents opinions of more than 35,000 of its employees and illustrates the importance of understanding employee perceptions when developing safety action plans.
In particular, both Teamwork and Empowerment are revealed to be significant predictors of safety outcomes. The analysis for this organization involved employee opinion data from 37 sites and actual safety data from the same 37 sites collected one year later.
As expected, our analysis found that the incidence of accident-related workday interruptions was higher at sites where respondents perceived higher workloads. Also, employee perceptions of Teamwork were found to be related to this safety measure. Furthermore, employee ratings of Teamwork were actually found to moderate the impact of perceived Workload on accident-related interruptions to the workday:
Under conditions of below average teamwork, greater workload was associated with a 62 percent higher rate of safety incidents. In contrast, under conditions of above average teamwork, even high workload sites experienced only moderate rates of safety incidents, suggesting that greater teamwork buffered the impact of high workload.
Further analysis revealed a negative relationship between incidences of accident-related absences from work and employee empowerment. In general, the incidence of accident-related absence was almost 74 percent lower at sites where workers reported higher levels of empowerment.
Our research also identified exemplary sites within the organization, i.e., sites with low levels of safety-related accidents and strong levels of Teamwork and Empowerment. These sites were targeted for follow-up studies aimed at identifying and disseminating information about best practices that could impact safety at work sites.
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Justine O’Conner is a research associate and member of the global safety culture survey
practice for Towers Perrin-ISR, 303 East Ohio Street, Chicago, IL 60611, 312-828-9725, Fax:
312-828-9742, www.isrinsight.com.
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