Work health and safety in small and medium enterprises: a field research

In this study, the work area was chosen as the Ankara for in order to see work health and safety practices in SMEs. Determined the effectiveness and applicability of work health and safety practices in SMEs in the manufacturing sector in this area. Aims to give information about the work health and safety practices in SMEs in this region. In this study, there applied two questionnaires for each enterprise one of which is to gather information about general management structure of enterprises and the other is to realize what and how much employees know about work health and safety. While preparing the questionnaire, the general structure of the production sector is considered, former studies in this field are checked, interviews with statistic experts are made and the opinions of the employees and managers in this sector are taken into consideration. In the study, SPSS 15.0 analysis program is used. First the reliability analyses of the data that are cited to this program are tested. After the reliability of the data is guaranteed, the results are assessed. As a result of the assessments made, it is realized that there are very important deficiencies in work health and safety in SMEs s which are active in production sector through Ankara region. It is seen that in order to remove these deficiencies, much more disciplined and knowledge based surveys about work health and safety have to be made.Additionally, although new regulations in work health and safety issues are enacted in our country within adaptation process to European Union, it is seen that there are very big deficiencies in practice.