Evaluation of safety climate differences among employees’ demographic variables: a cross-sectional study in two different-sized manufacturing industries in Malaysia

Abstract

Introduction. Demographic information is one of the key parameters that organizations utilize to modify their practices in order to respond to the existing risk within work environments. The present article aims to assess the level of safety climate factors as well as to evaluate the influence of personal factors on safety climate in two different-sized industries. Methods. A total of 216 employees in two large and three small and medium-sized chemical manufacturing industries responded to a questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to measure the safety climate level; a two-independent-sample Mann–Whitney U test and a Kruskal–Wallis test were run to compare the difference in safety climate scores among different demographic variables. Results. The lower level of safety climate in small and medium-sized industries revealed lower understanding and performance of management and non-management with regard to safety climate compared to the large industries. Additionally, significant mean differences on some safety climate factors among demographic variables were detected in both sizes of industries, emphasizing the important role of the employees’ demographic variables on the plants’ safety climate. Conclusion. Improving organization-level and group-level safety climates is recommended to improve employees’ level of safety climate and control their personal factors.

Keywords:

• demographic information
• employees’ perception
• manufacturing industry
• safety climate

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) for supporting us in this research. Also, special thanks go to the management and participating employees of the studied refinery and chemical manufacturing companies in Malaysia for their sincere cooperation in the collection of data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.