Organizational Safety Performance Research Articles

Safety attitudes of management.

Unless senior management has a positive approach to controlling safety in the same way as it controls production, quality, costs and sales, then the number of accidents suffered will not be substantially reduced. To make a significant improvement in an organization's safety performance top management must demonstrate its own concern and work actively to get the commitment of all supervisory levels in managing safety. Changing our company's approach on the above lines caused a reduction in the lost time accident frequency rate per 106 man hours from 34·7 in 1971 to 0·5 in 1982; the number of days lost per annum from over 4000 to 21 and the number of back injury lost time accidents from about 20 to 2. The key ingredient in any successful safety programme is top management commitment. Without this the programme will not achieve the desired results.