Survey of Safety Climate in a Petrochemical Industry in Mahshahr

Safety Climate as one of the health and safety management performance evaluation indicators is discussed. The purpose of this study was to plot the safety climate of the under study Petrochemical industry and evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses.

Loughborough University Safety Climate Assessment Toolkit (LSCAT) was used in this study which assesses the safety climate governs on the workplace in 17 dimensions. Nine of them deal with attitude of workers directly and three of them deal with Organizational activity and fine of them via interview, deal with issues such as management style, Cooperation and etc. 1 to 10 scale is used for scoring each dimension.

Average score of the industry's safety climate was obtained 5.9. Of 17 studied dimensions, 9 dimensions were weak (score less than 6). Lowest score were related to Event & Accident and Change management dimensions. Highest score were related to Individual priorities and need for safety (8.65). Generally relationship between individual variables (ages, work experience, education) and safety climate were not significant (P>0.05).

Generally one can conclude that individual variables such as age, education and experience have not significant effect on safety climate. It seems that top management forms the organizational climate and consequently safety climate. It reaffirms the basic principle of senior management commitment to safety and its role in preventing accidents. Thus safety climate can be used as a good method for assessing Occupational Health and Safety Management Performance.