Improving the Safety-Performance Nexus: A Study on the Moderating and Mediating Influence of Work Motivation in the Causal Link between Occupational Health and Safety Management (OHSM) Practices and Work Performance in the Oil and Gas Sector

Prevalence and associated factors of occupational injuries in an industrial city in Ghana

BACKGROUND

Workers are exposed to workplace hazards which increase their risk of occupational injury. Data on occupational injuries and associated factors are important for planning and informing national policy regarding workplace health and safety. This study sought to estimate the prevalence and factors associated with occupational injuries among workers in an industrial city in Ghana.

METHODS

A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted among 459 workers in the Tema industrial enclave in Ghana from 22nd December 2020 to 27th February 2021. Participants were recruited using a two-stage sampling technique. Eight communities were randomly selected from twenty-five communities in the first stage while households in each community were randomly selected in the second stage. Data on socio-demographic characteristics, occupational health and safety and occupational injuries were collected. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between occupational injuries and associated factors.

RESULTS

The mean age of the workers was 33.9 (±6.8) years with a range of 21-53 while over 18.1% of them were working at the Port and Harbour. The prevalence of occupational injury among the workers in the preceding twelve months was 64.7%. The mechanism of injury was mainly the use of working tools (45.8%) and hot surfaces, substances or chemicals (14.1%). Being a casual staff (AOR: 2.26, 95%CI: 1.04-4.92), working at Port and Harbour (AOR: 3.77, 95%CI: 1.70-8.39), no health and safety training (AOR: 2.18, 95%CI: 1.08-4.39), dissatisfaction with health and safety measures (AOR: 4.31, 95%CI: 2.12-8.78) and tertiary education (AOR: 0.03, 95%CI: 0.01-0.10) were significantly associated with occupational injuries.

CONCLUSION

The prevalence of occupational injuries in this study was high. Promoting machine tools' safety, health and safety training, and satisfaction with health and safety measures through rewarding workers who do not sustain injuries could be key to employees' health and safety.

Emotional intelligence as a conduit for improved occupational health safety environment in the oil and gas sector

To address the issue of promoting occupational health and safety at the workplace, this study aimed to evaluate the mediating effect of four different dimensional constructs of Emotional Intelligence (EI) on the influence Occupational Health and Safety Management Practices (OHSMP) hold on safety performance and workplace accidents among oil and gas workers. The study is explanatory research that adopted a cross-sectional survey design. Convenience and stratified sampling techniques were used to select 699 respondents from the three major government-owned oil and gas organizations. The multiple standard regression and bootstrapping mediation methods were used for data analysis after subjecting the data to exploratory and confirmatory factor assessments. Results indicated that OHSMP significantly predicts EI, safety performance, and workplace accidents. Again, EI was found to predict safety performance and workplace accidents significantly. Results also indicated that all the construct dimensions for measuring EI significantly explain the relationship between OHSMP and safety performance, as well as the influence of OHSMP on workplace accidents. The theoretical basis for these findings is that workers with high-level EI are likely to cope with occupational health and safety lapses or safety-related challenges at the workplace by participating and complying with the organization's safety management practices or procedures. Such employees are likely to exhibit safe working behaviors and contribute to improving safety performance in the organization.

Religiosity and safety performance: mediating role of safety behaviour

Purpose

Safety science research has largely focused on areas such as oil and gas, mining and construction, with a paucity of research in the agricultural sector which constitutes over 60% of the workforce in Ghana. This paper investigated the extent to which religiosity of rice farm workers predicts their safety performance through safety behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected data from 469 respondents, comprising 347 males and 122 females from three large rice irrigation schemes in southern Ghana in a cross-sectional survey, and analysed the data with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

Findings

Religiosity had a moderate positive direct relationship with safety behaviour, while safety behaviour had a very weak relationship with safety performance. Also, safety behaviour played a competitive partial mediating role in the relationship between religiosity and safety performance.

Practical implications

The findings led to the conclusion that religiosity is an essential direct antecedent of safety behaviour at work and an indirect antecedent of safety performance. Accordingly, the authors recommend that safety practitioners, managers and supervisors put mechanisms in place to cautiously encourage optional religious programmes that would enable organisational members to get a deeper understanding and knowledge of their religion and promote religious freedom and diversity at the workplace.

Originality/value

This paper has contributed to the debate on the relevance of religiosity at work and occupational safety and health promotion in the African context. This seems to be the only study in Ghana that has investigated how religiosity relates to safety behaviour in production agriculture, specifically, rice farming. Another contribution of this study is the evidence supporting the mediating role of safety behaviour in the relationship between religiosity and safety performance.

Leadership Styles, High-Involvement Human Resource Management Practices, and Individual Employee Performance in Small and Medium Enterprises in the Digital Era

This research investigates the positive relationship between leadership styles, high-involvement human resource management practices, and individual employee performance. In this study, we adopt servant, shared, and empowering leadership to explain leadership styles in the digital era. We propose four hypotheses and design a research framework to be analyzed. We develop a self-report questionnaire and distribute it online to three hundred targeted respondents, and collect two hundred and seventy-six complete responses from November 2021 to January 2022. This research applies a quantitative method, using structural equation modeling run by SPSS and AMOS. The results reveal well-distributed data, and all the indicators of the three variables are valid and reliable. The use of CFA confirms the indicators’ validity and reliability. The GoF analysis ensures that the research model is feasible for SMEs. The hypothesis analysis shows the acceptance of H1 and H3, but the rejection of H2 and H4. Leadership styles positively affect individual employee performance and high-involvement human resource management practices in SMEs operating in Lubuklinggau. High-involvement human resource management is not a mediator of the relationship between leadership styles and individual employee performance.

Evaluating workplace safety in the oil and gas industry during the COVID-19 pandemic using occupational health and safety Vulnerability Measure and partial least square Structural Equation Modelling

The study aims to apply the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to model workplace safety in the Oil and Gas Industry (OGI) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The five areas of the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Vulnerability Measure (e.g., Exposure to Workplace Hazards, Policies and Procedures in the Workplace, Perception on Health & Safety Culture in the Workplace, Self-Awareness in Health & Safety Procedures and Responsibilities, and Preventive Measure for Prevention of the Transmission of COVID-19 at Workplace) were considered as the constructs to be evaluated. Fifty workers from the oil and gas industry worldwide participated in the online survey, and the data were analyzed using the SmartPLS software. The results revealed that only Perception on Health & Safety Culture was a significant factor influencing the perceived workplace safety in the OGI during the COVID-19 pandemic (β = 0.603; t-value = 3.323; p-value = 0.001). The study suggested that the oil and gas companies should maintain a positive perception of health and safety culture to improve workplace safety even during the pandemic.

Impact of Safety Culture on Safety Performance; Mediating Role of Psychosocial Hazard: An Integrated Modelling Approach

We conceptualize that safety culture (SC) has a positive impact on employee’s safety performance by reducing their psychosocial hazards. A higher level of safety culture environment reduces psychosocial hazards by improving employee’s performance toward safety concerns. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how psychosocial hazard mediates the relationship between safety culture and safety performance. Data were collected from 380 production employees in three states of Malaysia from the upstream oil and gas sector. Structural equation modeling was implemented to test the suggested hypotheses. The proposed model was evaluated using structural equation modeling. A stratified sampling with a Likert 5-point scale was used to distribute the questionnaires. Furthermore, the proposed model was tested using the simulation of the structural equation and partial. According to our findings, all hypotheses were significant. A review of prior studies was used to select the items of the dimension for the data collection. Safety culture was assessed with psychosocial hazard to determine its direct and indirect impact on safety performance. Results suggest that to enhance safety performance (leading and lagging), psychosocial concerns in the workplace environments should be taken into consideration by employees. In addition, the findings showed that the psychosocial hazard fully mediates the relationship between safety culture and safety performance.