Management Practice in Stimulating Safety Culture: A Study at Malaysian Education Sector

Abstract

Understanding safety culture in an organization can make a significant contribution to changing employee attitudes and behaviors in relation to workplace health and safety. Many studies have shown the importance of element that leads to broad behaviors, or culture actions, that are considered essential to the development of a positive safety culture in a workplace mostly in high-hazard industries, but less is done in the education sector. The aim of this research paper is to identify areas of improvement that can be addressed by managerial decisions and also policy activities in the Malaysian education sector, in creating academic organizations as a safe workplace for teachers and students. Therefore, this study was to analyze the relationship between factors that contribute to safety culture, analyzing through the Importance-Performance Matrix Analysis (IPMA) what the aspects to improve by the management to increase a safe working condition in the education sector, using PLS-SEM. Data were collected from 447 academic staff from Vocational Colleges using a cross-sectional survey by using a multi-stage sampling. Several components such as safety training, safety knowledge, PPE, safety communication, safety rule and the influence of peers significantly contribute to the positive safety culture in vocational training as the managerial need to keep up the great effort in bringing these element in this sector. Malaysian Ministry of Education should place OSH Education as a separate course in curriculums of vocational and technical schools at all levels. Furthermore, legal regulations must be included in OSH Education so that all staffs and students grasp the legal status and importance of OSH.