Safety climate and its relationship with furniture companies’ safety performance and workers’ risk acceptance

This study aims to analyse the relationship between safety climate and the level of risk acceptance, as well as its relationship with workplace safety performance. The sample includes 14 companies and 403 workers. The safety climate assessment was performed by the application of a Safety Climate in Wood Industries questionnaire and safety performance was assessed with a checklist. Judgements about risk acceptance were measured through questionnaires together with four other variables: trust, risk perception, benefit perception and emotion. Safety climate was found to be correlated with workgroup safety performance, and it also plays an important role in workers’ risk acceptance levels. Risk acceptance tends to be lower when safety climate scores of workgroups are high, and subsequently, their safety performance is better. These findings seem to be relevant, as they provide Occupational, Safety and Health practitioners with a better understanding of workers’ risk acceptance levels and of the differences among workgroups.

Defining risk acceptance criteria in occupational settings: A case study in the furniture industrial sector

The use of appropriate acceptance criteria in the risk assessment process for occupational accidents is an important issue but often overlooked in the literature, particularly when new risk assessment methods are proposed and discussed. In most cases, there is no information on how or by whom they were defined, or even how companies can adapt them to their own circumstances. Bearing this in mind, this study analysed the problem of the definition of risk acceptance criteria for occupational settings, defining the quantitative acceptance criteria for the specific case study of the Portuguese furniture industrial sector. The key steps to be considered in formulating acceptance criteria were analysed in the literature review. By applying the identified steps, the acceptance criteria for the furniture industrial sector were then defined. The Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) for the injury statistics of the industrial sector was identified as the maximum tolerable risk level. The acceptable threshold was defined by adjusting the CDF to the Occupational, Safety & Health (OSH) practitioners’ risk acceptance judgement. Adjustments of acceptance criteria to the companies’ safety cultures were exemplified by adjusting the Burr distribution parameters. An example of a risk matrix was also used to demonstrate the integration of the defined acceptance criteria into a risk metric. This work has provided substantial contributions to the issue of acceptance criteria for occupational accidents, which may be useful in overcoming the practical difficulties faced by authorities, companies and experts.

Occupational risk in a glass manufacturing industry unit

Risk assessment is one of the main pillars of the framework directive and other directives in respect of health and safety. It is also the basis of an effective management of safety and health as it is essential to reduce work-related accidents and occupational diseases. To survey the hazards eventually present in the workplaces the usual procedures are i) gathering information about tasks/activities, employees, equipment, legislation and standards; ii) observation of the tasks and; iii) quantification of respective risks through the most adequate risk assessment among the methodologies available. From this preliminary evaluation of a welding plant and, from the different measurable parameters, noise was considered the most critical. This paper focus not only the usual way of risk assessment for noise but also another approach that may allow us to identify the technique with which a weld is being performed.