Safety Culture and Its Underlying Dimensions: Emergency Services Personal Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55737/qjssh.vi-ii.25354Keywords:
Safety Culture, Injuries, Thematic Analysis, Rescue 1122Abstract
Poor workplace safety is causing approximately 2.78 million casualties daily, which leads to a considerable burden of workplace injuries/ diseases costing approximately 4% of the annual GDP of the world (ILO, 2020). To explore the perspective and underlying dimensions of the safety culture of Emergency Services Personnel (Rescue 1122), the present investigation was conducted from 10-5-2023 to 9-5-2024 in the city of Lahore, Punjab. A purposive sample of 12 Participants (9 men and 3 women, including 3 managers, 3 trainers, 3 middle managers, and 3 participants) who had been serving the department for at least 3 years and had a maximum experience of 15 years was obtained. Inductive and deductive approaches were used to discover safety culture and its underlying dimensions based on focus group findings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for a duration of 45 to 70 minutes, followed by thematic analysis. Major identified themes of safety culture were: safety management, safety environment, safety insights, safety behavior & consequences, and safety participation, along with other sub-dimensions, two new factors (safety behavior & consequences and safety participation) will be a value addition. Management domain comprised of facets like management commitment, leadership, supervision, and organization support. Safety environment domain facets were safety training, equipment availability, safety rules & regulations, communication channels, work schedule, and safety crew. The facets of safety insights and behavior were safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety learning attitude, risk awareness, safety audit, accident reporting, and safety violations reporting mechanism.
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