Effects of Occupational Health and Safety Training Conducted in the Workplaces on Safety Behaviour in Turkey: An Evaluation in the Private Security Sector

Abstract

Private security is a sector where security services are provided to many industries within protection packages for people or the environment. With the occupational health and safety (OHS) training conducted in the workplaces, it is aimed to increase the safety behaviour tendency of all the employees from all sectors and to contribute to the formation of a positive safety culture. The study aims to examine the effect of OHS training given by OHS Specialist and Workplace Physician on safety behaviour and to evaluate this effect within the framework of demographic characteristics of employees. The demographic characteristics of private security personnel based on evaluation are gender, age, educational status, marital status, the condition of an occupational injury at workplaces in which he/she is currently working and worked in the past, occupational tenure, union membership, hazard class perception and position. The research is in cross-sectional and quantitative research design. In this study, the employees working in the private security sector in the Anatolian side of Istanbul constitute the working environment of the study. In total, the valid data from 540 private security personnel were used in research analysis. In the analysis of the study, descriptive statistics, and Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H tests from inferential statistics were used. According to the findings of the study, it was determined that the training performed by the OHS Specialist and Workplace Physician had a "high" positive effect on the behaviour of the employees. It is concluded that training affects the behaviour of employee more positively as the employee's age increases, in case of any work-related accident in any period, in the range of 5-10 years of working time, in case of holding position close to the senior management.

C1 [Arpat, Bulent; Bertan, Beyza] Denizli Pamukkale Univ, Dept Occupat Hlth & Safety, Denizli, Turkey.