Azita Zahiri Harsini¹ and Fazlollah Ghofranipour¹*
¹Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Corresponding Author:
Fazlollah Ghofranipour, Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran, Tel: +98- 2182883669; Fax: +98-2188013030; Email: ghofranf@modares.ac.ir
Abstract
Safety and healthy workplace has received many researches attention in the recent years. Safety behaviors are one of the major issues of organizations, because a safe workplace is a critical factor of the quality of work life [1]. Safety climate in an organization is expected to influence safety behavior positively in the health sector. Thus when employees perceive the organizational safety climate to be positive, they are more likely to participate in positive safety behaviors.
Citation
Harsini AZ and Ghofranipour F. The Some Antecedents of Safe Behaviors among Employees. SM J Community Med. 2016; 2(1): 1017
Introduction
Safety and healthy workplace has received many researches attention in the recent years. Safety behaviors are one of the major issues of organizations, because a safe workplace is a critical factor of the quality of work life [1]. Safety climate in an organization is expected to influence safety behavior positively in the health sector. Thus when employees perceive the organizational safety climate to be positive, they are more likely to participate in positive safety behaviors.
Perceived work pressure may decrease employees’ tendency for participation in safety behaviors. Therefore, in order to management of organizations to promote safe behaviors they must apply policies and rules that will create a culture or context that reduces work pressure among employees. The relationship between work pressure and safety behavior is stronger when management commitment to safety is high than when low. Therefore, when employees perceive management to be committed to safety but perceive pressure at work, it leads to them less likely to participate in safe behaviors, because employees lose trust to management and be dissatisfied with management rules and procedures when they perceive that, it does not practice what it preaches, so more likely to participate in unsafe behavior as a means of showing dissatisfaction and insurrection, hence less likely voluntarily participate in safety activities [2].
Job stress has been identified as a risk factor impacting on employees’ safety behavior. The researches indicate that advanced safety procedures, training and using the technology reduce employees’ job stress at work and lead to decrease occupational accidents. Occupational safety and health researchers have found the importance of examining the relationship between job-related stressors and injury outcomes for workers in the workplace. For example, the direct relationship between these types of stressors and illness and injuries accidents across a variety of occupations has been well reported. Job stress can increase risk and decrease safety behavior and performance among employees, one reason that lower job stress can reduce frequent error making. People who have high emotional intelligence are inclined to control their emotions and behaviors, to participate in safety decision-making and to improve their safety behavior in operations. Indeed, employees’ self-reported safety behavior decrease when that the level of job and organizational stressors is high and worker’ emotional intelligence is low. Also job stress leads to lower safety compliance behavior when emotional intelligence is low rather than high [3].
Employees who experience high job demands are more inclined to behave unsafely at work. Researchers make a distinction between two different types of individual behaviors, including safety compliance and safety participation. Safety compliance refers to the core activities that need to be carried out by employees to maintain and promote workplace safety. Safety participation describes the behaviors that do not directly participate to an individual’s personal safety, but which do help to create a context that supports safety. Job demands (one’s perception of the level of job difficulty) and resources influence the occurrence of these safety behaviors through two processes. First, the Job Demands- Resources (JD-R) model proposes that a health-impairment process takes place when that the job demands leads to the exhaustion of mental and physical resources, hence burnout develops when job demands (like high workload) are high and job resources are limited. In these situations, individuals use a performance-protection strategy to maintain performance. Work pressure was a critical factor that influences safety behavior at work, because pressured employees incline to value performance over safety. The second process is a motivational process where with job resources are instrumental in achieving organizational goals. This means that in the context of safety, job resources give employees the ability to focus their efforts toward working safely and maintaining and promoting safety in the workplace [4].
Unsafe behavior increases the risk the occurrence of accident in the workplaces that should to be managed properly. Unsafe behavior has been identified as any behavior that exhibited by an employee without considering safety rules, standards, procedures, principles and instructions that can negatively influence the system safety or endanger the worker himself or his colleagues. The majority of employees were not tended to consider safety principles in their behavior. Safety attitude, motivation, and safety knowledge and supportive environment (safety climate) were the best antecedents of safety behavior in the workplace, because any change in their states was leaded to a change in probability of the occurrence of safe/unsafe behaviors. Moreover, improvement of supportive environment and employee engagement are the best strategies to achieve a high proportion of safety behaviors at work. One of the main reasons that employees do not follow safe work procedures and instructions is that these procedures are likely out of date or do not adapt the actual way in which a task should be completed. Thus, it is strongly recommended that the procedures and instructions should be updated based on the new and innovative opinions beliefs of employees who will use them [5].
Safety in the workplace is a complex issue and the behavior based safety in the construction industry is more complex. Despite of advancements in construction safety have been made over the recent years, accidents and injuries still take place on construction sites. Critical factors of organizational safety climate (management commitment to safety, social support, and work pressure) and individual factors (safety knowledge and safety motivation) influence employees’ safety behavior in the workplace. Construction work is very dynamic and employees have high degrees of freedom when they perform their tasks at work. Site safety is dependent on workers adaptive behaviors. Providing sufficient and appropriate safety knowledge and skills and promoting safety motivation by training are often the prerequisite for them to develop a safety climate and to promote safety behaviors among employees [6].
Safety behaviors are defined as an important factor in the maintenance of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Safety behaviors are actions perceived typically by an individual adapted as necessary to prevent the occurrence of a feared outcome in social situations. The using of safety behaviors in social situations has been related to higher anxiety, weaker performance, less desirable evaluations by others, and less tendency by others toward future interactions [7].
Safety behaviors are unnecessary actions adapted to prevent, escape from, or decrease the severity of a perceived threat. Most cognitive-behavioral theorists assume that the use of safety behaviors during exposure process is maladaptive and dissonant because they linked to fear reduction. However, there is growing evidence suggests that the using of safety behaviors can facilitate exposure. Restorative safety behaviors allow for full confrontation with a core threat do not related with significant indicators of successful exposure, while preventive safety behaviors that hinder participation with the stimulus or experience may be weaken exposure outcomes. During the course of exposure therapy, it is important to provide a rationale why a particular safety behavior warrants step-by-step elimination. Providing a rationale for why prevention efforts are disheartened (and may require probable elimination) may provide into explaining why restorative safety behaviors may be facilitative. Restorative safety behaviors may be facilitative and do not seem that leads to harmful outcomes whereas preventive safety behaviors may require to be avoided in exposure [8]. Supervisors may have a key role in developing a context that allocates a high value to safety behaviors. One way they can conduct this is by performing their role of dictating to employees what ought to be accomplished (i.e., injunctive norms). Applied researches on safety interventions should focus on the designed programs to change proximal variables, especially social norms, which in turn are expected to have favorable effects on person-related factors and individual behaviors for employees across a variety of occupations [1].
Finally, accidents and injuries have resulted in enormous personal, social and financial costs for individuals and organizations, thus to reduce unsafe behavior in the workplace, Individual and organizational factors as antecedents of safety behaviors should be considered. In the present study safety climate, perceived work pressure, job stress, safety knowledge and safety motivation were as the some antecedents of safety behaviors. The lack of a comprehensive model that can be used for explaining antecedents and outcomes of safety behavior was one of the most problematic issues of the previous studies. Furthermore, future researches can extend the model by including the individual and organizational factors personal, cognitive and organizational factors as antecedents of safe behaviors among employees.
