Studying the impact of safety attitude of employees towards establishing a positive safety climate in Sri Lankan rubber manufacturing industry

Abstract

With the emerging concept of safety climate which is based on employee perceptions of management commitment on organizational safety in a period of time which is based on behaviour management, safety culture built up with the time, firm implementation of safety procedures and many more aspects of employee attitudes. Manufacturing industry is the most discussed industry on occupational health and safety practices. Among other industries Sri Lankan rubber manufacturing industry is a vital industry sector with direct and indirect employees over 300,000 (EDB, 2024) and exposing to many types of hazards including chemical hazards which evidenced few major fatalities as well. But not subjected to a significant level of discussion on occupational health and safety of rubber industry employees. Hence, I have selected Sri Lankan rubber industry to study on the impact of employee attitudes for the safety climate and to find the significant issues related to attitudes which are negatively impacting to the safety climate and provide recommendations to overcome those. 30 employees from production level and 30 employees from staff level altogether 60 employees were randomly selected to the study from a leading rubber manufacturing company. The survey conducted through a questionnaire with 27 questions. Identified about 16 issues related to employee attitudes through the initial questionnaire survey after analyzing the data in detail and categorizing the identified issues to main clusters, 5 prominent issues were derived from the study as low trust in management, improper reporting of hazards, and inadequate knowledge on safety practices, poor peer safety culture and overconfidence. For these identified prominent issues, recommendations to breach the gaps were given through consultation of 3 industry experts who are with more than 10 years of experience in the field of safety and employee relations. Accordingly, this study contributes to the field of safety climate in manufacturing industry and impact of employee attitudes to have a positive safety climate by identifying major issues in employee attitudes and recommendations to overcome those.