Occupational HEALTH And Safety Awareness In Forest Products Industry Employees

Increasing technological developments and industrialization have revealed the necessity of developing occupational health and safety practices. The forest products industry has many risk factors. For example; machines, complex production process, processing of non-wood forest products and raw materials, etc. In this thesis, it is aimed to examine occupational health and safety awareness in forest products industry employees. The universe of this cross-sectional and descriptive study consists of employees working in the forest industry sector in Kastamonu province, Tosya district, and the minimum sample size was calculated as 192 people. The data of the thesis were collected by face-to-face survey method. SPSS 23.0 program was used for analysis of survey results. At the evaluation of the data; frequency distribution, confidence analysis, Chi-Square test, Independent Sample T-test, Mann Whitney-U test, Kruskal Wallis-H test, ANOVA test, Bonferroni test and Pearson correlation analysis were used. The Safety Awareness and Competence Scale and the Safe Behavior Scale were used in the thesis. 75.6% of the 270 employees participating in the research are male, 24.4% are female. The mean age is 37.2 ± 9.8. 54.8% of the participants in the thesis were at high school or higher education level, and 71.5% were married. 6.3% of employees have a chronic illness and 35.2% of employees have had Covid-19. 68.9% of the employees have more than 5 years of experience in this sector. It has been determined that 44.4% of the employees work in the furniture department, 29.3% in the timber department and 21.5% in the composite board section. It has been observed that 87.4% of the employees have gotten educated on occupational health and safety at their current company. It has been determined that 15.6% of the employees have experienced at least one work accident during their working life. 70.4% of the employees regularly use personal protective equipment in the workplace. It was determined that 58.9% of the employees use respiratory protection, 55.2% use hand and arm protection, and 54.1% use hearing protection. Significant differences were found in the level of occupational health and safety awareness according to the descriptive characteristics of forest products industry employees (p<0.05). Statistically significant difference was found between the occupational accident status of the employees by age group (p<0.05). It was determined that the majority of the employees who had an occupational accident were in the 41-50 age group. It has been determined that 61.5% of the employees who have a work accident at the workplace work in the furniture department. It has been determined that 64.3% of the employees who have had a work accident do not use their personal protective equipment regularly in the workplace. The Security Awareness and Competence Scale score of the employee group who has 5 years or less experience in the sector they work in is higher than the other groups. It has been observed that the level of safety awareness and competence and safe behavior is higher in employees who are not married and do not have COVID-19 (p<0.05). It has been observed that the level of safety awareness and competence is higher in employees who do not smoke and have 5 years or less experience in their sector (p<0.05). Statistically significant and positive relationship was found between the safety awareness and competence scale and the safety compliance (r=0.562, p<0.01) and safety participation (r=0.392, p<0.01) sub-variables of the safe behavior scale. As a result of the thesis, occupational health and safety awareness of forest products industry employees was found at a good level in line with the literature. Raising awareness of a safe and efficient working environment will be possible by ensuring the continuity of the improvements made.