A research on organizational safety culture and mindfulness in construction sector

Providing a safe working environment is one of the most important problems of the construction industry. Although the importance given to health and safety is increasing day by day, thousands of construction accidents continue to occur every year. Adaptation of the working environment for safety requirements depends on the creation of safety culture in organizations. After the Chernobyl nuclear accident, safety culture has been identified as a critical concept by organizations to reduce the accidents in the workplace. It is possible to define safety culture as a whole of beliefs, values, perceptions and traditions that are shared about health and safety in an organisation in general. Work accidents have an enormous impact on the economy and the future of the country as well as the individuals, their families and society. Accidents have direct and indirect costs and can reduce profits of the organizations; but there are many hidden savings in the prevention of the accidents for the organizations. The cost of work related accidents is greater than the prevention of the accidents. Work accidents and fatalities can change people' lives forever. For this reason, the studies to be done in high risk industries are important for the work-related hazards. In recent years, it has been determined that the main causes of accidents are largely organizational, managerial and human factors rather than the technical failures. Therefore, studies have been focused on the concept of safety culture and safety performance. In Turkey also there are several studies regarding the safety culture and safety performance in different sectors. The construction sector is generally an important sector with its share in the national and global economy. It is a locomotive sector and the developments in this sector also affect the sub-sectors and the sectors linked to the construction. Construction is a high hazard industry where the construction workers engage in many activities that may expose them to serious hazards. Tools, resourses, materials, equipments, methods statements can be differ in every project, the discontinuity of projects and work force, the use of subcontractors increase the uncertainty and high risk in the industry. Construction works are project-based works involving jobs from one week to several years and therefore it is difficult to create and maintain working groups. Safety culture in organizations is one of the most important factors affecting the safe behaviors of employees. The safety performance of construction workers indicates the perception of the safety culture and the attitude toward the safety in the construction site. Measuring safety performance helps achieving the targets of organizations in health and safety management. Another important factor that affects employees' behavior is the concept of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a psychological concept that can be defined as process of bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment. Because of the risks and hazards involved in construction works and construction sites it is important that the focusing of the individual's attention in the present time. The construction workers and their employees must cooperate with each other, trust each other and warn them when necessary regarding the risks in the construction work and construction site. For this reason, mindfulness can increase the individual's understanding of the safety requirements, work requirements and the productivity. Mindfulness can be predicted as one of the main factors in the success of any construction project. Mindfulness can improve the safety behaviors of the individuals, relationship and communication among individuals and enhance the productivity. In this study, the concept of safety culture, safety performance and mindfulness were theoretically explained. A 70-item survey was conducted to measure the influence of individual's safety culture perception and mindfulness on individual safety behavior consisting of 136 people working in construction sector. These data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 programme. The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1988, 1991) is one of the most effective and most used conceptual framework for human action researches. In this study, to understand the relationship between safety culture, mindfulness and safety behavior, Janzen's planned behavior theory was used. Organizational safety culture has been observed with four subcomponents such as individual attitude, group norms, management attitude and workplace press. The first component of the safety culture model is the individual attitude. The individual attitude indicates the individual's safety commitment, the use of safety equipment and willingness to take safety risks and perception of the safety regulations, safety violations and errors. The second component of the organizational safety culture is group norms. Group norms indicates the the influence of the workers on the attitude and intentions of an individual towards the safety behavior. Management attitude toward safety is the third component of the organizational safety culture. It indicates how individuals perceive the support and commitment of management toward safety. In the conceptual model of the study, it has been argued that the management attitude towards safety has a meaningful relationship with the attitude of the individual attitude and group norms. Workplace pressure is the fourth component of safety culture and a pioneer of intent, violation and error behavior. The theory of planned behavior assumes that workplace pressures have direct and indirect effects on safety behavior (Ajzen, 1991, 2005). The planned behavioral theory of Ajzen (1991, 2005) suggests that an individual's perceived workplace pressure, together with the intention of the individual, can predict the safety behavior of the person. For this reason, it can be concluded that the workplace pressure can be the main predictor of the violation and error behavior. Safety behaviors include violations and error components. Violation behavior occurs when the security rules are deliberately disregarded. Disregarding of the safety rules can create errors. On the other hand, error behavior can describe as individual's accidental failures. Individual mindfulness has been observed via a Turkish-adapted model of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) developed Brown & Ryan (2003) in the study. Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) developed by Brown & Ryan (2003) is a 15-item scale to assess attention and awareness in daily life. MAAS; Brown & Ryan (2003) is one of the most popular scale in the literature to measure the mindfulness. Three hypotheses tested in the study. These are; H1: Mindfulness and violation behaviour are negatively correlated with each other. H2: Mindfulness and error behaviour are negatively correlated with each other. H3: Regarding safety climate dimensions, workplace pressure, violation behaviour and error behaviour are positively correlated with each others, and negatively correlated with mindfulness. According to the findings of the analysis results; workplace pressures had a significant positive influence on violation behavior (r= .528, p= .000) and error behavior (r= .224, p= .009). However, the relationship between the workplace pressures and intention variables was found to be not statistically significant in the study. It can be attributed to the fact that the intention has a different and more powerful meaning in Turkish national culture than the western culture. A negative relationship between the mindfulness and the components of the safety behavior was tested in the study. As per the correlations mindfulness is negatively correlated with violation behavior (r=-.475, p=.01) and error behavior (r=-.196, p=.01). The analyses show that; mindfulness has a positive significant effect on safety behavior components. Findings imply that the concept of mindfulness discussed in this study has an important role in reducing workplace accidents, understanding human errors. To be mindful could enable people to notice thoughts without attaching significance and meaning to them. The individual can learn and improve the level of mindfulness. In recent years, the concept of mindfulness has become increasingly popular in many areas; but not actively used in the industrial organizations. Althoug this study was conducted in the construction sector; when the "human" factor is taken into consideration in the workplace accidents, the concept of mindfulness is considered to be an important factor in regulating and improving the safety behaviors of the individuals in other sectors also.