The Effect of Safety Culture on Safety Performance: Intermediary Role of Job Satisfaction

Aims: Development of safety culture at work environments which has emerged as an important solution in the field of occupational health and safety is important for minimizing the number of occupational accidents and diseases. The main purpose of this research is to determine the relationship between safety culture, safety performance and job satisfaction and propose a model showing how safety culture increases safety performance via the mediation of job satisfaction, and to determine whether occupational accidents are caused by unsafe practices or unsafe work environments.

Study Design: The research was designed as a cross-sectional field study. Survey technic was used as the data collection method and the survey consists of 73 questions.

Place and Duration of Study: A mining enterprise operating in the city of Kutahya, Turkey in January 2014

Methodology: Convenience sampling method was used and the data was collected face to face from the employees who volunteered to participate in the research. The collected data was analyzed via SPSS Statistics 22 and AMOS 20 program was used in order to determine the relations between safety culture, safety performance and job satisfaction. The values for which P=.05 has been accepted as statistically significant.

Results: A total of 358 employees constitute the research sample. More than half (52%) of the employees perceive unsafe worker practices as the most common reason of occupational accidents. Also, significant relationships were found between safety culture, safety performance and job satisfaction. These results point out that human factor has the most important role in the prevention of occupational accidents. Accordingly, businesses and employers should establish and disseminate safety culture in their organizations.