Employee occupational safety climate perception and safety performance relationship: A field research

Today, it is seen that one of the important problems encountered in working life is occupational accidents. On the other hand, it is seen that there is a significant increase in the studies on the effect of the human factor in occupational accidents in recent years. The concept of safety climate is one of them. This thesis study aims to examine the relationship between occupational safety climate and safety performance of employees. The sample of the study consists of 195 blue-collar employess working in the manufacturing industry sector in Trabzon province in 2018. In the scope of the research, survey method was used as data collection technique. In the evaluation of the data, frequency distribution, reliability analysis, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis and correlation analysis were used in the research. As a result of the analysis, a positive correlation was found between the safety climate variables and safety climate variables. That is, the positive or negative safety climate effects the safety performance of the employees in the same direction. In addition, the relationship between demographic factors and perceptions of safety climate was also investigated. The results obtained show that there is no statistically significant difference between demographic factors such as marital status, age, education, working part, working year and perception levels of safety climate. Finally, in the research, no significant difference was found between the occupational accident and near-miss event and the safety climate. Research results show that the safety climate is a very important factor in creating a healthy and safe working environment. In line with these results, ıt can be said that establishment of a positive safety climate within the organization will positively effect the safety performance of the employees and decrease the occupational accidents. Keywords: Safety climate, safety behaviour, safety performance, occupational accident.