Abstract
The paper concerns organisational safety culture and how it may be applied to reduce employee accidents in the mining industry in Ghana. A sample of 340 managerial workers of three mining companies in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality was selected using the simple random sampling technique. Data for the study was gathered using a survey questionnaire. The Structural Equation Modelling analysis technique was performed to establish the relationship between safety culture and each of the five dimensions of workplace safety (work safety, management safety practices, safety programmes, supervisor safety and co-worker safety). It was found that safety culture is a significant positive predictor of work safety (R2 = 0.039), management safety practices (R2 = 0.272), safety programmes (R2 = 0.159), co-worker safety (R2 = 0.225) and supervisor safety (R2 = 0.199). The study concluded that workplace safety can be improved by enhancing the safety culture in the mining industry in Ghana. The study recommends that in order to curb the incidence and occurrence of accidents and injuries in the mining industry in Ghana, Human Resource (HR) managers should lay more emphasis on ways that would enhance the safety culture of all employees in the industry.
 Keywords: Safety Culture, Mining Industry, Workplace Safety, Industrial Accidents, Ghana 
 
Highlights
Following the 2010 National Mining Policy of Ghana, there has been a significant flow of external investment in the mining sector of Ghana (Ghana Mineral Commission, 2014)
The findings from this study indicate that workplace safety can be improved by enhancing the safety culture in the mining industry in Ghana
The study recommends that Human Resource (HR) managers in the mining industry in Ghana should lay more emphasis on ways that would enhance the safety culture of all employees in the industry
Summary
Following the 2010 National Mining Policy of Ghana, there has been a significant flow of external investment in the mining sector of Ghana (Ghana Mineral Commission, 2014). The mining industry contributed twenty-seven per cent (27%) of the total tax revenue in 2012, with gold alone recording approximately $5.6 billion from 4.3 million ounces (Kyeremateng-Amoah & Clarke, 2015). The increase in investment and mining activities did present economic opportunities for Ghana and brought some occupational health and safety challenges (Kyeremateng-Amoah & Clarke, 2015). It is reported that staff of the mining sector are frequently at risk of occupational injury due to the abundance of risk factors such as rock falls, fire explosions, mobile equipment accidents, entrapments and electrocutions (Stemn, 2018). A report from the Inspectorate Division of the Ghana Minerals Commission (2014) has shown that while in 2008 accidents that caused both minor injuries and no injuries were 58, the number increased to 1,201 in 2014. Overall workplace injury increased from 9,664 cases in 2017 to 18,070 cases in 2018 (Ghana Mineral Commission, 2019)
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