Journal of Health and Safety at Work

Introduction: Positive safety attitude of employees is directly associated with workplace safety, and it can decrease occupational accidents through increasing the number of safety acts. Assessment of employees’ safety attitude in workplaces can be more helpful to identify underlying causes of unsafe acts. The main aim of this study was to assess safety attitude and its’ relationship with different personal and occupational variables in a number of manufacturing companies, located in Urmia City, Iran.  

Material and Method: In this study, the safety attitude of 194 employees was measured in 9 manufacturing companies using a questionnaire with acceptable validity and reliability. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: participants’ personal and job related information, as well as 46 safety attitude related questions. The questions of safety attitude was measured using a five-point Likert scale in form of ten main aspects. 
 
Result: The results indicated that majority of participants (78.9 %) had a moderate safety attitude level and the mean (±SD) score of total safety attitude was 3.19 (±0.25). “Commitment to safety and participation in safety activities” and “safety talk and risk information communication” obtained the highest and lowest scores of safety attitude factors, with mean (SD) of 3.97(±0.52) and 2.53(±0.58), respectively. In addition, the participants from private companies showed a better safety attitude than those of governmental companies (P-value<0.05). Managers and workers, who had previously received safety training, reported a different attitude toward various factors of safety attitude, in comparison with untrained groups.

Conclusion: Since the majority of participants had a moderate safety attitude, this research suggests the study companies to attempt in order to increase the quantity and quality of safety training courses, as well as safety communication of managers and supervisors with workers for improving their attitude toward safety and subsequently decreasing occupational accidents.