Safety climate in the Ghanaian printing industry

Abstract

The concept of safety climate has gained attention from safety experts as one of the most efficient and effective ways to deal with occupational accidents and injuries across industries. This paper explores the safety climate and the effect of employees’ demographic variables on the safety climate perception in the printing industry. We adopted the Safety Climate Scale (SCS) developed by Ghahramani and Khalkhali to measure the safety climate in the print manufacturing industry of Ghana. Our findings, based on all the dimensions in the scale, revealed an unsafe safety climate. Also, there was a correlation between demographic factors (age, gender, experience, and education) and perception of workplace safety climate. The major contribution of this paper is to extend empirical research that provides a greater understanding of the health and safety environment within the printing industry of Ghana and the personal and collective attitudes and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to organisations’ health and safety practices. These findings are important for managers in the printing industry because they provide evidence about the current safety climate so that management can take the action to reduce risks and improve performance. To improve the safety climate, we recommend that management and other stakeholders within the printing industry must commit and communicate effectively, embrace safety practices and procedures, and be more accountable and responsible to minimise the effects of a poor safety climate.