"Digging Deeper" into the Relationship Between Safety Climate and Turnover Intention Among Stone, Sand and Gravel Mine Workers: Job Satisfaction as a Mediator

Safety climate in Pakistani universities' laboratories: an assessment of individual factors

Objectives. Current research aims to identify factors that affect the occupational safety climate in university laboratories despite their perception as low-risk areas compared to industrial environments. Methods. A safety climate survey was conducted in science laboratories across various engineering universities in Pakistan. The survey questionnaire was administered to 406 personnel, and a quantitative method for analysis was selected to examine the socio-demographic variables. A 5-point Likert scale (1 =  strongly disagree to 5 =  strongly agree) was used to perceive responses from participants. Additionally, a scale reliability test was conducted, and multivariate analysis of variance was performed to determine the relationship between selected dependent and independent variables. Results. The study found an overall safety climate score of 3.16 ± 0.55, indicating a moderate to high perception of safety on a scale of 1-5. Parameters such as role in the laboratory, departments/disciplines, accident experience and safety training significantly affected the safety climate score, while gender, age group, duration in university and accident witnessing did not. Conclusion. Upper management involvement, safety communication and direct supervision are crucial for improving the safety climate of university laboratories. The study recommends the consideration of the identified significant safety climate dimensions in laboratory safety policy-making at academic institutes.

The role of organizational factors in promoting workers' health in the construction sector: A comprehensive analysis

INTRODUCTION

The number of physical and mental problems caused by occupational accidents and diseases increases every year. To control them, the safety climate at work is a recognized critical factor. However, a widely applicable model to capture the safety climate for various industries and organizations is lacking.

METHOD

This study proposes a theoretical model to measure the direct and indirect effects of safety climate on workers' physical and mental health, mediated by job satisfaction, in the construction sector. We propose a multidimensional construct of safety climate, considering the most salient factors from the literature, and including psychological capital as a new factor. Using data from the last wave of the European Working Conditions Survey (2015) in Spain, the proposed model was validated using structural equation modeling.

RESULTS

Our findings suggest that to further improve the mental health of construction workers, work-life balance and job rewards and compensation must be prioritized along with safety climate. As for physical health, safety climate and work-life balance are crucial. Finally, we provide some recommendations for construction company managers based on a ranking of all the factors affecting the safety climate and the workers' health.

Assessing the impact of job demands and hazardous workload activities on musculoskeletal symptoms in stone, sand, and gravel mining operations

BACKGROUND

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and associated musculoskeletal symptoms (MSS) are problematic in stone, sand, and gravel mining. Research is needed to explore relationships between job demands, work-related hazards and MSS.

OBJECTIVE

An exploratory study was conducted in Indiana during 2019-2020 to examine associations between job demands, work-related hazards and MSS.

METHODS

Through convenience sampling, cross-sectional survey data from 459 workers were collected and analyzed using logistic multiple and binary logistic regression methods. Outcome variables were MSS to the low back, neck/shoulder, and wrist/hand. Predictor variables and MSS measures are based on the Dutch Musculoskeletal Questionnaire.

RESULTS

Increased odds of low back MSS were related to dynamic loads (OR = 2.14), pushing/pulling heavy loads (OR = 1.56), torso bending or twisting (OR = 2.36), bent, stooped, or twisted posture (OR = 2.04), uncomfortable postures (OR = 2.07), repetition (OR = 1.67) and vibrating tools (OR = 1.81). Increased odds of neck/shoulder MSS were related to dynamic loads (OR = 1.83), static loads (OR = 1.24), heavy lifting (OR = 1.50), pushing/pulling heavy loads (OR = 1.68), bending or twisting of the neck (OR = 1.82), twisted neck posture (OR = 1.77) and uncomfortable postures (OR = 1.81). Increased odds of wrist/hand MSS were related to dynamic loads (OR = 2.06), static loads (OR = 1.45), bending or twisting of the wrists/hands (OR = 10.52), extended reaching (OR = 3.05), repetition (OR = 5.25), awkward postures (OR = 4.47), working above shoulder level (OR = 2.47), and vibrating tools (OR = 1.78).

CONCLUSION

Hazards that increased the likelihood of MSS were identified. These hazards should be abated or controlled to prevent MSDs in stone, sand, and gravel mining. More applied research, including ergonomic assessments to further identify hazards that can be controlled or abated, is warranted.

Effects of Leader Conscientiousness and Ethical Leadership on Employee Turnover Intention: The Mediating Role of Individual Ethical Climate and Emotional Exhaustion

Employees working under conscientious leadership perceive their leaders as ethical leaders. This study investigates the conscientiousness of leaders as an essential trait of ethical leadership and the relationship between ethical leadership and employee-turnover intention. Additionally, we study the potential mediating roles of the individual-level ethical climate (self-interest, friendship, and personal morality) as well as the level of employees’ emotional exhaustion that contribute to the decision-making process of turnover intention. Building on social learning and social exchange theories, outcomes from nine industrial manufacturing organizations comprising 260 subordinates’ responses show that leaders’ conscientiousness is positively related to ethical leadership and negatively associated with employees’ turnover intention. Consistent with this hypotheses, results found that, in an individual-level ethical climate, employees experience diminished emotional exhaustion. The relationships are found to mediate between ethical leadership and turnover intention in manufacturing organizations. Additionally, it was also found that individual-level ethical climates cause a relatively positive impact on employees’ emotional exhaustion leading them to lower turnover intention.

Long Work Hours, Overtime, and Worker Health Impairment: A Cross-Sectional Study among Stone, Sand, and Gravel Mine Workers

Background: Research has shown that long work hours and overtime are associated with health impairment, including stress, burnout, and overall health. However, this has not been thoroughly assessed among stone, sand, and gravel mine workers. As such, this study examined whether significant differences in stress, burnout, and overall health existed among workers that worked different hours each week. Methods: ANOVA analyses were completed for the outcome variables (stress, burnout, and health status). Each analysis included three categorical independent variables: age, sex, and work hours. Age and sex were control variables. BMI was added to the health status analysis as an additional control variable. Results: There were significant differences between work hour groups for all three outcomes. Post hoc analyses determined that workers working >60 h/week had more stress, more burnout, and lower health. Differences were not found between age or sex. There were no differences in health status for different BMI groups, but the interaction of BMI and work hours was significant. Conclusions: Working more than 60 h per week was problematic. Mine and safety administrators should enact programs to protect and promote worker health, particularly among those working long hours, especially if more than 60 h per week.

Modeling the turnover intentions of Thai health-care personnel in pandemic times: moderating role of Covid-19 burnout

PURPOSE

Covid-19 cases are rising at a high rate in Thailand. Thailand's administration has formulated many initiatives to combat the spread of coronavirus. However, during a pandemic, health-care workers have a diverse range of tasks that make it more challenging to continue working in hospitals. Consequently, the authors modeled the turnover intentions of health-care personnel to capture relevant psychological aspects of employees during the pandemic. Specifically, this study aims to focused on the moderating role of Covid-19 burnout (CBO) in the relationship between transformational leadership (TL) and job turnover intentions (JTI) with job satisfaction (JS) and knowledge hiding (KH) as mediators.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

This research collected data using self-administered questionnaire. A two-stage partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is carried out as an analysis technique to measure the linear relationship among constructs. The study tests hypotheses (direct and indirect effects) using 310 sample size of health-care personnel.

FINDINGS

The findings indicated that CBO intensified the JTI of health-care personnel and strengthened the association of JS and KH with JTI during the Covid-19 pandemic. TL had a negative indirect effect on JTI. In addition, JS had a negative impact on JTI.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

The study highlights the importance of TL and JS as ways to reduce or alleviate JTI in health-care personnel during the Covid-19 pandemic in Thailand. Furthermore, CBO and KH can enhance JTI in health-care personnel.

Turnover intention among operating room nurses during the COVID-19 outbreak and its association with perceived safety climate

Background

In critical situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses always face a lot of stress that can increase their turnover intention. Since a suitable safety climate in the workplace is considered an important factor in preventive management of occupational hazards and people's adaptation to stressful conditions, the present study aimed to determine Turnover intention among operating room nurses during the COVID-19 outbreak and its association with perceived safety climate.

Methods

In this descriptive correlational study, participants were 190 operating room nurses working at public hospitals in Mazandaran (Iran) who were selected by stratified random sampling. Data were collected using the Anticipated Turnover Scale and the Nurses' Safety Climate Questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS16.

Results

The results of the linear regression analysis revealed that safety climate significantly reduced turnover intention among nurses in the COVID-19 pandemic (P < 0.001). An increase of one unit in the total score of safety climate led to a 0.6 reduction in the turnover intention of operating room nurses.

Conclusion

The present findings demonstrated an unfavorable safety climate perceived by perioperative nurses in the COVID-19 pandemic, with a significant inverse relationship with turnover intention. Strategies such as training personnel on the prevention of the disease transmission in the surgery of patients infected with or suspected of COVID-19, creating a proper supportive environment for personnel, and providing appropriate protective equipment to prevent infection with COVID-19 seem absolutely vital to improving the safety climate in the operating room, thereby reducing turnover intention.

Social and psychological resources moderate the relation between anxiety, fatigue, compliance and turnover intention during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

The workplace health management lessons to be learned from the pandemic are important. However, few studies have examined the relationship between workplace anxiety, resources and behaviors during the pandemic. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between anxiety, fatigue, compliance, turnover intention and social and psychological resources during the COVID-19 pandemic by applying the conservation of resources (COR) theory.

Design/methodology/approach

Path analysis was carried out using data obtained from a questionnaire survey conducted on 2,973 Chinese employees of Japanese companies in China.

Findings

The analysis showed that anxiety had a positive correlation with compliance, but simultaneously had a positive correlation with fatigue and turnover intention; psychological resources moderated to weaken the relationships between anxiety and compliance/fatigue; social resources moderated to strengthen the negative correlation between compliance and willingness to leave.

Research limitations/implications

This study targeted employees of Japanese companies in China. Therefore, in the future, it is necessary to verify generalizability as to whether it applies to employees of companies of other nationalities in other countries. Also, the authors used newly developed scales instead of the general psychological scales. Therefore, it is necessary to verify the reproducibility using a more general scale.

Practical implications

Anxiety encourages compliance practices but also increases fatigue and willingness to leave. Therefore, a method of inciting anxiety and making employees follow rules reduces the strength of an organization. To overcome this dilemma, managers need to provide psychological and social resources.

Originality/value

This study is the first to show how effective social and psychological resources are in the management of anxiety and fatigue in achieving high performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was conducted in the very early days of the COVID-19 pandemic with the cooperation of employees working for Japanese companies in China. However, the importance of utilizing resources in a crisis revealed by this study can be applied to all kinds of disasters.

Highlights:

-The current study is the result of a survey conducted on employees of Japanese companies in China in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

-Anxiety had a positive effect of promoting compliance and a negative effect of increasing fatigue and willingness to leave the job.

-Psychological resources mitigated these effects of anxiety and, as a result, reduced fatigue and willingness to leave.

-Social resources enhanced the effect of compliance on reducing willingness to leave.

-Workplace health problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic should be addressed by increasing employee resources on a regular basis, rather than aggravating anxiety.

Safety Climate in MT Mining: A Case Study

A safety climate case study was carried out at a surface metal mine where investigators administered the Liberty Mutual Short Scale Safety Climate Survey to 365–368 miners to measure safety climate in consecutive years. Following the baseline safety climate survey in 2019, Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training was conducted with 81 middle to upper management employees at the mine site. Investigators found statistically significant differences in the pre vs. posttraining FSL assessment scores of the middle to upper management employees who attended the training. The follow-up safety climate evaluation was compared to baseline scores and revealed no significant improvement. The overall baseline company safety climate score of 76.38 increased minimally to 76.50 (p-value = 0.616). Investigators also evaluated differences in safety climate between the company’s three major divisions (operations, maintenance, and administration). Both years administration had the highest mean score and operations had the lowest mean score. The authors attributed the statistically significant differences found among the three major divisions to various dissimilarities in their work environments.

The Role of Filial Piety in the Relationships between Work Stress, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover Intention: A Moderated Mediation Model

In China, filial piety, which usually refers to showing respect and obedience to parents, has exerted an important effect in the relationship between work stress and turnover intention. However, the mechanism behind this effect is still unclear. To address this gap in the existing literature, we developed and tested a moderated mediation model of the relationship that work stress shares with job satisfaction and turnover intention. In accordance with the dual filial piety model and the stress-moderation model, our hypothesized model predicted that the mediating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between work stress and turnover intention would be moderated by reciprocal filial piety (RFP) and authoritarian filial piety (AFP). The analytic results of data that were obtained from 506 employees of manufacturing industries in China supported this model. Specifically, RFP and AFP, as a contextualized personality construct, positively moderated the direct relationship between work stress and turnover intention as well as the corresponding indirect effect through job satisfaction. In particular, RFP and AFP strengthened the positive effect of work stress on turnover intention. Based on these findings, recommendations to help employees fulfill their filial duties and reduce the effect of work stress on turnover intention among employees of Chinese manufacturing industries are delineated.

The future of research on work, safety, health and wellbeing: A guiding conceptual framework

Work plays a central role in health. A conceptual model can help frame research priorities and questions to explore determinants of workers' safety, health, and wellbeing. A previous conceptual model focused on the workplace setting to emphasize the role of conditions of work in shaping workers' safety, health and wellbeing. These conditions of work include physical, organizational, and psychosocial factors. This manuscript presents and discusses an updated and expanded conceptual model, placing the workplace and the conditions of work within the broader context of socio-political-economic environments and consequent trends in employment and labor force patterns. Social, political and economic trends, such as growing reliance on technology, climate change, and globalization, have significant implications for workers' day-to-day experiences. These structural forces in turn shape employment and labor patterns, with implications for the availability and quality of jobs; the nature of relationships between employers and workers; and the benefits and protections available to workers. Understanding these patterns will be critical for anticipating the consequences of future changes in the conditions of work, and ultimately help inform decision-making around policies and practices intended to protect and promote worker safety, health, and wellbeing. This model provides a structure for anticipating research needs in response to the changing nature of work, including the formation of research priorities, the need for expanded research methods and measures, and attention to diverse populations of enterprises and workers. This approach anticipates changes in the way work is structured, managed, and experienced by workers and can effectively inform policies and practices needed to protect and promote worker safety, health and wellbeing.

NOSACQ-50 for Safety Climate Assessment in Agricultural Activities: A Case Study in Central Italy

Safety climate assessment has been recognized as a powerful tool to bring to light workers' perceptions related to safety practices, attitudes and behaviors at the workplace. Accordingly, its investigation can provide useful information about safety problems within a company before accidents occur. In literature, numerous studies can be found investigating safety climates in different types of industry. However, safety climate assessment in agricultural activities is addressed scarcely, even though agriculture represents a very hazardous sector. To reduce this gap, the present study proposes an investigation of safety climate among farmers by means of the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50). The results of the survey brought to light a low level of safety perception of the interviewed sample, especially as concerns safety commitment and risk-taking attitudes. In particular, a different attitude toward safety issues has been registered depending on both the position and gender of the interviewed farmers. Overall, the output of this cross-sectional analysis adds to the current literature by expanding knowledge of safety climate among farmers, representing a baseline for further investigations based on human-centered approaches to enhance safety in agriculture and consequently social and workplace aspects of sustainable agricultural systems.

Health, Physical Activity and Musculoskeletal Symptoms among Stone, Sand, and Gravel Mine Workers: Implications for Enhancing and Sustaining Worker Health and Safety

There is little data delineating relationships between health and worker musculoskeletal symptoms (MSS), particularly among stone, sand, and gravel mine (SSGM) workers. There is also little data detailing the relationships between physical activity and MSS among these workers. A cross-sectional study using data from 459 SSGM workers was completed. Logistic regression analyses assessed relationships between health factors, physical activity, and low back, neck, shoulder, and knee MSS. Those who reported their health as very good/excellent were less likely to suffer low back and knee MSS. Those who indicated their health was poor/fair were more likely to suffer shoulder, neck, and knee MSS. Obese workers were more likely to experience knee MSS and those who smoked in the past had higher odds of neck MSS. Vigorous physical activity was mostly protective, but those performing more than 5 h of moderate physical activity each week had greater odds of shoulder and neck MSS. Given these results, workers in SSGM may benefit from targeted interventions that bolster vigorous physical activity and improve health. Further, health protection efforts need to be initiated by SSGM operations to address work issues and to sustain health as job roles and work hours impacted MSS as well.