Safe working: designing safety practices for service sector organizations

Abstract

A wide range of practices are adopted by organizations to ensure the safety of their employees. Their purpose is two-fold; they aim to reduce accidents and injuries and they aim to change individual behaviours to encourage safer working practices. The focus of these studies was on the safety of front-line workers and their supervisors. Three different explanations were used to indicate how particular practices of supervisors achieved the outcomes of either a reduction in accidents or a change in behaviours of the front-line workers, namely Mintzberg’s standardization of work, Skinner’s operant conditioning, or perspectives on trust. Specifically, we targeted retail, office environments and warehouses. We also examined differences in practices and perceptions of safety across the organizational hierarchy, interviewing front-line workers (n=57), team leaders or supervisors (n=52) and managers (n=33). We conducted 143 semi-structured interviews in 13 different organizational locations (1 office, 2 warehouses and 10 retail stores). Four main hazards were commonly reported (trip hazards, slip hazards, manual handing and the use of manual handing equipment), although a further nine were reported by more than 10% of the interviewees. Some hazards appear to be common to more than one context, whereas others are unique to one environment only. There were also hierarchical differences in the emphasis placed on the different hazards. A total of 41 different safety practices were adopted by these organizations.