Ocuupational Health Hazards

The textile industry is characterized by a high existence of many potential hazards that can easily inflict occupational injuries among workers. Recent years have witnessed the link between the concepts of safety climate and with variety of safety outcomes including accidents and injuries.
Yet, safety climate measures are rarely addressed in Ethiopia. Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore the role of employees’ safety climate perception in predicting the occurrence of occupational injuries. Moreover, the study also examines the difference in safety climate perception based on demographic factors to aid a greater understanding of the many dynamics in predicting injuries among respondents. A cross-sectional study design was conducted on 255 employees from the three production deportments (spinning, weaving, and
finishing) of Kombolcha Textile Factory. A pre-tested safety climate scale which was originally developed by Cox and Cheyne (2000) was employed to assess the prevalent safety climate in the factory. This tool has 43 items within nine dimensions. The prevalence rate of injuries in the factory was 294 per 1000 exposed workers per year. Fingers and hands were the most affected body parts. Workers’ gender, age, and length of service duration also appeared as significant predictors of occupational injuries. Findings from this study show, when all the nine dimensions
of the safety climate tool were considered as independent variables and injuries as a dependent variable, the safety climate perception of employees was significant in predicting self-reported occupational injuries during the past year. The result of the discriminant function analysis also showed certain safety climate dimensions were more salient than others in predicting injuries. Finally, the study implies, by using safety climate surveys as a proactive indicator of safety, organizations can modify their safety condition by intervening in certain aspects of safety climate dimensions that are linked with injuries.

Keywords: Employees, demographic factors, Safety Climate Perception, dimension of safety climate, injury