Safety climate in the Ghanaian printing industry

employees 36-year-olds and above (M = 2.3757, .737882). This result suggests that older employees aged 36 and above have a lower perception of the safety climate compared to those aged 19 to 35 years, considered younger employees. This means older employees are less likely to follow through with safety commitment, safety priority and risk non-acceptance. While pre- vious studies in age and safety perceptions reveal mixed results, our findings are consistent with the findings of Glendon and Litherland [40], which found significant relationships between age and safety climate perceptions in the road construction industry. Educational attainment and perception of workplace safety Hypothesis 4. There is a relationship between educational attainment and individual perception of the workplace climate. Out of the subgroup found with low educational attainment (basic, secondary, and middle school graduates) the independent sample t-test indicated the self-reported safety climate per- ception was more negative than the self-reported safety climate perception of the highly edu- cated, (M = 2.84, SD = 0.83026), at a statistically significant difference of t (169) = -3.713, p = 0.001). The results suggest that the perception of a safe work climate increases with the level of edu- cation. The outcome proves that the safety climate perception of employees with basic/second- ary education is very low (negative) compared with those with tertiary education, although they both scored negatively on SCSMI. This denotes that employees with a low level of educa-

tion perceive safety at their workplaces as more negative than the employees with a high level of education. This position contradicts other research findings that measure the level of educa- tion and safety climate. An explanation for our findings could be because employees with ter- tiary education usually work in administration in press houses where the risks are comparatively minimal than those who work at the press and post-press sections of the organi- sation, they are likely to perceive their safety climate as safer. Organisation size and perception of workplace safety Hypothesis 5: There is a relationship between company size and employee perception of the safety climate. The subgroup analysis for the type of organisations by size—micro, small, medium and large—was assisted by ANOVA. In examining the subgroup differences, we found no signifi- cant subgroup differences. The homogeneity of variance test involved using Levene’s Test and found tenable with f (3,168) = 0.99, p = 0.398. Between-groups mean significance level (p = 0.407) which is above 0.05, shows the safety climate between groups has no statistically significant difference. Thus, the overall ANOVA was not statistically significant. We, therefore, suggest that the negative safety climate cuts across many organisations and this perception is consistent with all employees regardless of the size of the organisation. Conclusion The results showed that all the socio-demographic characteristics had significant relationships

with safety climate perception in the industry. These findings are consistent with the findings of Choudhry et al. [61] who reported that demographic factors such as age, sex, and level of work experience influence safety climate perception and consequently influence an employee’s safety behaviour; and by extension may play a significant role in risk-taking behaviour at the work place [62]. Indeed, if the outcome of the organisation’s safety climate study can be an effective indica- tor of the "safety health state" of the company, and a predictor of workplace injuries, then the PLOS ONE Safety climate in the printing industry PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278100 November 28, 2022 11 / 15