Understanding industrial safety signs: implications for occupational safety management
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635571111182809 |
| Published date | 27 September 2011 |
| Date | 27 September 2011 |
| Pages | 1481-1510 |
| Author | K.L. Chan,Alan H.S. Chan |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Understanding industrial safety
signs: implications for
occupational safety management
K.L. Chan and Alan H.S. Chan
Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management,
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the understanding of industrial safety signs
and messages by registered and non-registered safety officers in Hong Kong with ten different user
factors, and to examine the relationship between cognitive sign features and sign comprehensibility.
Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology includes the survey development
and appropriate statistical analyses. In total, 92 Hong Kong Chinese participated voluntarily in the
study. A questionnaire survey was used to collect information about demographics, personal
experience on safety and hea lth issues, experience of re viewing safety sign infor mation,
comprehension scores, and the ratings of sign features for 30 industrial safety signs used in
Hong Kong. The effect of ten user factors on sign understanding for the design of highly usable safety
signs was examined.
Findings – Of the ten factors tested, only the factor of possession of registered safety officer (RSO)
status was a significant predictor of comprehension performance. As expected, comprehension scores
varied with the cognitive sign features of familiarity, concreteness, simplicity, and meaningfulness.
Research limitations/implications – The currently used industrial safety signs should be
redesigned as soon as possible, with careful consideration of cognitive sign features. To make the
results more generally applicable, further research is needed to collect more data, particularly from
females.
Practical implications – This research suggests that an effective education program for promoting
the intended messages of industrial safety signs in various industries and work environments should
be conducted as soon as possible. Safety officers, especially those who work in the construction
industry need to play a more prominent role in ensuring workplace safety, and in transferring safety
knowledge to the workers.
Social implications – There is a need to enhance RSOs’ risk perception and to increase awareness of
the importance of safety signs through training programs, so as to improve workplace safety and
organizational safety culture. The redesigned safety signs need to be launched with a public education
program.
Originality/value – The paper’s findings emphasize the need to create awareness of the importance
of industrial safety and promote understanding of safety sign meanings amongst people in their work
environments. Useful information for the design and use of safety signs was generated.
Keywords China, Occupational health and safety,Health and safety requirements,Work safety,
Industrial safetysigns, Safety officers, Cognitive signfeatures, Hong Kong
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants
Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 110508).
Thanks are extended to Gullane Limited for provision of safety sign stimuli and P.Y. Fan for her
help in the data collection process of the study.
Understanding
industrial
safety signs
1481
Received 14 February 2011
Revised 7 June 2011
Accepted 8 June 2011
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 111 No. 9, 2011
pp. 1481-1510
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/02635571111182809
1. Introduction
There has been a growing concern about industrial safety in Hong Kong in recent years,
and this concern has manifested itself in a variety of ways. Local laws require that
industrial undertakings now have additional responsibilities for industrial safety; they
must strengthen the supervision and administration of production safety, and take a
more active role in preventing and reducing accidents. Regulations and guidelines have
been promulgated for industrial undertakings and professional institutions with the aim
of improving occupational health and safety. More industrial concerns have been
required to identify and assess potential risks to eliminate unacceptable risks and
increase productivity (Law et al., 2006; Gabbar, 2007; Liu et al., 2007; Edington and
Schultz, 2008; Goetzel et al., 2008). However, there are still many industrial accidents
causing serious injuries and deaths. It was reported by the Hong Kong Labour
Department (2010) that the number of occupational injuries in all workplaces in the first
three quarters of 2010 stood at 31,580, representing an increase of 6.7 percent from 29,601
in the same period of 2009. The number of fatalities in the first three quarters of 2009 and
2010 were 129 and 143, respectively, representing an increase of 10.9 percent. Compared
with neighbouring countries, the reported injury rates in Hong Kong are relatively
higher. The annualized fatal injury rates per 100,000 employees for 2007 and 2008 for
Hong Kong were 6.6 and 6.8, respectively (International Labour Organization, 2011).
For Korea, the corresponding values were 0.04 and 0.05, respectively. For Japan,
the corresponding values were even lower at 0.01 and 0.00, respectively.
A recent investigation of fatal construction accidents showed that “poor safety
attitudes and behaviour of workers” was the main cause of industrial fatalities
(Wong et al., 2009). The design of the workplace environment is another obvious possible
cause of accidents and its importance was highlighted by Golding and Golding (1987).
However, according to Whittingham (2004), about 80 percent of accidents can be
attributed to human error. People make mistakes for a number of different reasons,
in particular when there is a lack of awareness or understanding of safety informati on
provided in the workplace (Sneddon et al., 2004; Laurence, 2005).
Hebblewhite (2009) indicated the importance of safety signage and pointed out that in
mine safety management systems, signage is one of the system components used for
delivering warning and guidance messages to mining workers so as to promote
appropriate and responsible behaviour in mine areas. It is important that “the industrial
designer should make a sign as clear and unequivocal as possible so that the target
group understand the message” ( Mono, 1997). Recent studies on safety signs, however,
have shown that some safety signs do not convey safety messages at all effectively (Liu
et al., 2005). Failure to achieve adequate understanding and to convey warning
information effectively can lead to injury or death (Lesch, 2003). Therefore, to reduce the
risk of misunderstanding and increase the level of sign comprehension, there is a need to
investigate the effects of user factors on sign understanding and to design safety signs
with a high level of usability. The study of industrial safety sign comprehensibility is
thus of great importance because at present there are no local codes, regulations, or
standards governing the design and use of such signs. It is of course, of interest to study
general understanding of safety signs by the people working in different industrial
environments. However, here, the authors considered that this study should be
conducted using safety officers because they are safety professionals with safety
work experience in various industries and work environments. As safety professionals,
IMDS
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1482
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