NOSACQ-50 for Safety Climate Assessment in Agricultural Activities: A Case Study in Central Italy.

Mario Fargnoli,Mara Lombardi

doi:10.3390/ijerph17249177

Abstract

Safety climate assessment has been recognized as a powerful tool to bring to light workers’ perceptions related to safety practices, attitudes and behaviors at the workplace. Accordingly, its investigation can provide useful information about safety problems within a company before accidents occur. In literature, numerous studies can be found investigating safety climates in different types of industry. However, safety climate assessment in agricultural activities is addressed scarcely, even though agriculture represents a very hazardous sector. To reduce this gap, the present study proposes an investigation of safety climate among farmers by means of the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50). The results of the survey brought to light a low level of safety perception of the interviewed sample, especially as concerns safety commitment and risk-taking attitudes. In particular, a different attitude toward safety issues has been registered depending on both the position and gender of the interviewed farmers. Overall, the output of this cross-sectional analysis adds to the current literature by expanding knowledge of safety climate among farmers, representing a baseline for further investigations based on human-centered approaches to enhance safety in agriculture and consequently social and workplace aspects of sustainable agricultural systems.

Highlights

Occupational health and safety (OHS) issues represent key factors of the social pillar of sustainable development: safety-related initiatives to reduce occupational accidents and illnesses support the operationalization of sustainability within companies [1]
Safety climate is described as the combination of shared perceptions among workers on the procedures, practices, attitudes, and behaviors related to occupational safety
It has been demonstrated that investigating safety climate (SC) perception can provide positive outcomes aimed at bringing to light precursors of accidents, and to augment shared knowledge and awareness among workers and managers on safety behavior, safety practices and safety compliance

Summary

Introduction

Occupational health and safety (OHS) issues represent key factors of the social pillar of sustainable development: safety-related initiatives to reduce occupational accidents and illnesses support the operationalization of sustainability within companies [1] In such a context, the evaluation of safety climate (SC) has been considered a powerful research approach [2], since its assessment is regarded as a means to collect information about safety problems practically before they lead to workers’ accidents [3]. As argued by Seo et al [4], SC investigation can bring to light organizational and cultural factors that are precursors of accidents These authors stressed the fact that the main benefit of assessing workers’ SC relies on its association with safety practices, accidents and unsafe behaviors.

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion