Assessment of occupational safety culture in textile industry employees in İstanbul

It has been demonstrated by various studies that safety culture is a leading indicator in preventing occupational accidents and it can be used as a tool to identify deficiencies and improve safety related issues in organizations. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the level of safety culture among the workers in the textile industry, and to contribute to the development of the safety culture in the organization by sharing the findings and results with the workplace where the study is conducted. This descriptive study was carried out in a company works in the textile sector that performs dyeing and printing in Istanbul. The sample was not selected, the number of all employees in the workplace was 182, and data were collected from 181 employees. The data were collected by observation response technique using the Occupational Safety Culture questionnaire (48 items) developed by Demirbilek and a questionnaire with a descriptive section of 15 questions. Descriptive statistics were used in the analysis of data, Mann Whitney U and chi-square tests for comparisons between two groups, Kruskal-Wallis test for more than two groups comparisons, Mann Whitney U test for post-hoc analysis and Spearman test for correlation analysis of binary data. In our study, the mean age ± standard deviation of the participants was 33.87 ± 10.14 years, and 38.1% of the participants were women. The total reliability value of the occupational safety survey form was 0.93, and the average score of the safety culture dimensions was positive level. In our study, the scores of safety culture dimensions were higher for that employees aged 46 and over, university graduates, those who see their economic status as good, employees other than workers, in those working 16 years and over compared to those working 0-5 years, those who did not work overtime, those who did not have work accidents during their working life and at the workplace where the research was carried out. A positive and significant correlation was found between the commitment of management and safety priority and safety communication, safety priority and safety communication, safety training and perception dimensions. It is necessary to organize programs suitable for different groups and especially to develop the dimension of safety participation to improve the safety culture in the organization.