Work safety climate. Comparison of selected occupational groups

RESEARCH ARTICLE Work safety climate. Comparison of selected occupational groups Marta Stasiła-SieradzkaID1☯*, Agata Chudzicka-CzupałaID2☯, Marta Znajmiecka-Sikora3☯ 1 Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Poland, 2 Department of Social and Organizational Behavior Psychology, Katowice Faculty of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Katowice, Poland, 3 Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz, Ło´dz, Poland ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * marta.stasila-sieradzka@us.edu.pl Abstract Implementation of effective programs to improve occupational safety should be linked to an understanding of the specific nature of the given job. The aim of the research was to com- pare occupational groups with different job-related specificities: industrial production line workers, retail workers and mine rescuers, in terms of their assessment of the work safety climate. The survey covered 2,995 respondents with diversified demographic characteris- tics. The study used an abridged version of the Safety Climate Questionnaire by Znaj- miecka-Sikora (2019) to assess 10 separate safety climate dimensions. The results of the MANOVA multivariate analysis, Wilks’ multivariate F-tests and univariate F tests prove that there is a statistically significant difference between the respondents representing the three occupational groups collectively in terms of global assessment of all work safety climate dimensions, and also indicate significant differences between workers belonging to the

three occupational groups in terms of their assessment of the individual dimensions of the work safety climate, except the organization’s occupational health and safety management policy as well as technical facilities and ergonomics, which may be due to the universality of the requirements set for organizations with regard to these two aspects of safe behavior. The differences observed in the assessment of the remaining work safety climate dimen- sions induces one to promote more differentiated and individualized activities, taking into account the work specificity and the nature of the threats occurring in the respective working environment of the representatives of the different occupations. The difference in assess- ment of the work safety climate found in the research encourages one to create practical programs for safety, not only in the procedural and technical dimension, but also in the social and psychological one. Introduction Researchers have recently been focusing increasingly often on the safety climate in the organi- zation, including its significance for the way workers behave in terms of health and life protec- tion. The employer’s task is to protect employees against threats. It often boils down to PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243056 December 14, 2020 1 / 19 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Stasiła-Sieradzka M, Chudzicka-Czupała A, Znajmiecka-Sikora M (2020) Work safety climate. Comparison of selected occupational groups. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0243056. https://doi.

org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243056 Editor: Sergio A. Useche, Universitat de Valencia, SPAIN Received: June 18, 2020 Accepted: November 15, 2020 Published: December 14, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Stasiła-Sieradzka et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The following institutions provided funding for publication fees: Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Poland, awarded to MSS; and Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz in Ło´dz, Poland, awarded to MZS. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland provided support for this study to ACC, under the