LITERATURE REVIEW ON OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

 

This brief literature review contains two journal articles of studies – one focusing more on the impact of lagging indicators on occupational safety and health (OSH), and the other, on the impact of safety education and training on the incidences of safety in the organization.  The two article critiques below are a comprehensive summary of the two journal studies that are closely related to the study being done by the researcher.

Article Critique #1

Journal:          International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 21, 284-290

Date:               2015

Author(s):      Pawlowska, Zofia

Purpose/Abstract: The study was conducted in 60 companies in order to determine what kinds of indicators were used for OSH performance measurement by these companies with different levels of OSH performance. The results reveal that the indicators most commonly used in all of the companies are those related to ensuring compliance with the statutory requirements. The study also revealed that the leading indicators are much more often adopted in companies with a higher performance level. 

Hypothesis:    The researcher wanted to find out the impact of lagging and leading indicators when evaluating the occupational health and safety performance of companies.

Method Type of Study: The study used the quantitative method and the experimental method. The population involved the employees of all the companies in the study. To collect information on the companies’ OSH performance and indicators used for its assessment, a questionnaire was developed in electronic form and circulated amongst executives in the studied companies. The questionnaire contained questions concerning the following - the company's size, sector and management systems implemented and the company performance in terms of OSH management.

Findings:  The most frequently applied lagging indicators are the number of accidents at work found in almost 97% of all the surveyed companies and the number of the absence days found in over 61% of all the companies. There are no statistically significant differences between using these indicators in high-performing and low-performing companies. For the other lagging indicators, a χ² test of independence indicates that the differences in using them are statistically significant; the strongest correlation was found for the indicator ‘number of incidents’. Leading indicators are applied less frequently than lagging indicators in all of the surveyed companies. The number of leading indicators used increases in line with the level of adopting OSH management rules according to the voluntary standards; this relationship is statistically significant. The most frequently applied leading indicator – the number of employees working in hazardous conditions – refers to OSH inputs. This indicator is employed in more than 70% of high-performing as well as low-performing companies.

Conclusions:  The performance indicators commonly used in the studied companies include the number of accidents at work and the number of people working in hazardous conditions. These indicators have to be determined in line with law provisions that require the company to present relevant data for national statistics and for the needs of insurance. The leading indicator that is among the most frequently used is the number of employees participating in training courses on health and safety issues. The indicator is also linked to ensuring compliance with the requirements set out in the law under which companies have to conduct periodical training courses on health and safety matters. These results point to the important role statutory requirements play in determining the indicators used to assess the OSH performance in all companies.

 

Limitations:  Although the study was pretty comprehensive, it could’ve used the information it had at hand to identify more about other OSH issues.  The top thing that comes to mind is identifying the most effective OSH performance indicators and find out how they can be implemented practically in the companies.  

 

Article Critique #2

Journal:          Trends in Food Science and Technology, 4(6): 306-312

Date:               2019

Author(s):      Dilkhaz, Sevar

Purpose/Abstract:  This study investigated 18 papers done between 2010 to 2019 in order to recognize the common leading and lagging indicators.  Four of the papers used correlation between the lagging and leading indicators.  The research results pointed out that the leading indicators can be used to discriminate the variances in the safety performance of projects.

Hypothesis:    The comparison between using leading indicators of the safety performance correlatively with lagging indicators.

Method Type of Study: The study chose fifty papers of which 48 were picked using these criteria – a) construction field association, b) safety factors, c) recognizing leading and lagging indicators, and d) academic journal studies. Only articles that assessed the safety indicator at a construction project class.

Findings:  The findings showed how leading and lagging indicators are correlated to one another  during construction projects. The leading indicators were analyzed.  They had data on safety talks, hazards testified which led the researcher to conclude that safety leading indicators are complicated.

Conclusions:  The sample size of 18 articles have been reviewed and analyzed to make a conclusion about the leading and lagging indicators in construction. The research is made in order to distinguish the positive and negative impacts between leading and lagging indicators and how they correlated in each other’s.  Only four papers discuss the correlation between the leading and lagging indicators. Ten leading indicators and two lagging indicators have been resulted after analyzing 19 indicators to be further investigated in the future works.

Limitations:  Due to limitations of time and resources, the researcher was only able to analyze 19 leading indicators.  The researcher advises future researches to focus on those indicators.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Module 9 Major Theoretical Frameworks (Leadership and/or Educational)

The guiding theory of this study is the behavioural learning theory. It is going to incorporate behavioral theory because the study believes that it can lead to changes in the organization and allow the discussion of the principles of occupational hazard control. The major concepts in this study include key safety information which serves as the foundational knowledge, the provision of opportunities to practice new skills which is the application of knowledge, and the exchange of personal stories to link injury safety knowledge, and unsafe practices in the organization which serves as the application, integration and connection of the theories being learned with the realities of safety education and training. 

The theoretical framework of this study addresses the health, economic, and social implications of being injured – the so-called human dimension; discussions on indirect consequences for workers, and their families, which is the caring part; and encouraged workers to identify safe practices and ways to find safety information. To promote behavioral changes and address worker perceptions, this theoretical framework also incorporates the health belief model, which proposes that behavior is influenced by perceptions of severity and susceptibility, benefits and barriers, and self-efficacy to achieve a desired behavioral change. In this type of safety education and training, the training staff emphasized the phrase “Yes, you can” and asked workers to identify actions they feel confident in doing to be safer at work, encouraging them to think about adopting safe practices and to stimulate contemplation of desired behavioral change.