Effectiveness of a safety training course in changing employee's attitude toward safety issues and its dimensions: a pathological study

Millions of occupational accidents and disease cases are reported from work places annually causing considerable human and financial damages. Safety training is globally considered the best strategy to mitigate these damages. In this project a safety attitude questionnaire was used to obtain the required information. The questionnaire contained items about 13 relevant variables: job conscientiousness, fatalism, leadership, safety consciousness, role overload, work pressure, job safety perception, supervisor safety perception, coworker safety perception, management safety perception, safety program and policies perception, interpersonal conflicts at work, and job involvement. A total of 204 individuals (101 in the control and 103 in the experiment group) in the Isfahan Steel Company completed the safety attitude questionnaire. This was followed by a 4-hour safety training course attended by the experimental group. After 30 days both the experimental and control group completed the questionnaire again. Descriptive statistics and covariate analysis were used the compare the data between the 2 groups. Safety training in the workplace influenced positively the general attitude of the personnel towards safety issues. Further analysis of the data revealed that the training affected statistically significantly only safety consciousness, leadership, and management safety perception. Assessment of safety attitude in the workplace and its dimensions can be used to identify those areas of safety training that need more attention and a better design.