| Summary: | World-wide it is estimated that workers suffer 250 million accidents every year, with 330 000
fatalities. In South a c a , the fatality rate is 426 per annum. Sishen mine also experienced safety
problems, namely a high injury rate, an average of one fatality per annum, and 85% of injuries
being caused by risk behaviour. Furthermore, the safety culture at the mine was moderate.
A proper safety management system requires continual attention to three domains, namely the
environment (equipment, tools and housekeeping), the person (knowledge, skills, abilities,
intelligence and personality), and behaviour. Sishen mine previously concentrated on the domains
of environment and person, and virtually ignored safety behaviour. To correct this, Sishen mine
adapted a behaviour based safety intervention programme.
The aims of this research were to determine drivers that motivate safety and risk behaviour, to
identify critical factors for the successful implementation of such a programme, and to determine
if the safety culture and performance were affected by the implementation of a behaviour based
safety intervention programme.
A single-group non-experimental design was used. Questionnaires were used to conduct non-experimental
surveys. The questionnaires addressed certain safety culture dimensions. A
longitudinal survey was carried out before and after implementation of the behaviour based safety
intervention programme.
The results showed that the safety culture at the mine improved since implementation of the
intervention programme. Management support for safety improved by 6%, peer support for safety
by 13%, personal responsibility for safety by 7%, management systems by 6%, and employees
actively caring for safety, by 3%. The improvement in safety culture also positively impacted on
the injury rate at Sishen mine.
Results indicated the following factors as being critical for a successful behaviour based safety
implementation (in order of importance): participation, structured implementation, training,
readiness for such a programme, communication, observation and feedback, target critical
behaviours, flexibility, effective intervention actions, and data management. The study identified
issues and challenges which must be dealt with, especially those applicable in developing
countries like South Africa, with unique circumstances such as social and political diversity.
The conclusion was that safety behaviour is mainly d i e d by activators, and motivated by
consequences. The ABC model was identified as an important tool to analyse the drivers for
safety behaviour in an effort to develop effective intervention actions.
It is recommended that companies shift their focus from traditional safety approaches to the
human dimension of safety. Thus, it is recommended that the behaviour based safety model must
be applied by companies in order to focus on behaviour. Secondly, it is recommended that factors
that are critical for a successful implementation must be identified and ranked in order of
importance. The attention which is paid to each critical factor should then be related to its relative
importance. It is also recommended that activators and consequences must be regarded as
important drivers for safety behaviour when intervention actions are to be developed, and that the
ABC technique should be applied in practice to analyse the appropriateness of the intervention
actions.
By way of conclusion, recommendations for future research are made. === Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.
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