The relationship between emotional intelligence, personality traits and safety behaviors in metal industries workers: Confirmatory factor analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Human errors cause accidents in the workplace. Screening workers at employment can prevent future accidents from happening. Two important tools that can be helpful in screening are determining the emotional intelligence score and personality traits score of the workers. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between emotional intelligence, personality traits and safety behaviors in metal industries workers. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional survey. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to determine the relationship between the components of emotional intelligence, unsafe behaviors, and personality. To collect data for this study, Five-Factor Goldberg questionnaire, Bar-On Emotional questionnaire and Safety behavior questionnaire were used. The collected data were entered into software (SPSS version 22) and refined. RESULTS: The results of this study showed that there was a significant positive correlation between personality traits, emotional intelligence and safe behaviors (p-value = 0.000). The confirmatory factor analysis showed that personality traits influence safe behaviours. Also, studies have shown that emotional intelligence has a positive effect on safe behaviours. The amount indicators of goodness of fit (GFI), Comparative Fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) and root mean square error approximation (RMSEA) were 0.944, 0.970, 0.965 and 0.061, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that personality traits and emotional intelligence influence safe behaviours in the workplace. Employers can use these two tools in the employment phase and prevent future human-related accidents.