Employees' perceptions of safety control mechanisms and production cost at a mine

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the requirements of safety legislation are observed and complied with by a single colliery in South Africa and its employees to ensure safety and maintain an accident-free working environment. From the literature, a framework including the following four main components is identified: (1) organizational adherence or compliance to safety legislation, (2) employees’ compliance regarding the application of safety control mechanisms, (3) employees’ attitude towards safety control, and (4) production cost’s relation to safety control mechanisms. An analysis of organizational safety control mechanisms and production cost is conducted through the use of a structured questionnaire, completed by 151 participants. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) are utilized to analyze the perceptions of participants. The contribution of the study is that an enhanced safety control questionnaire is developed with a greater emphasis on production costs; the above-mentioned four-component framework is refined into nine managerial factors; and statistically significant differences between the perceptions of different classes of labor (departments) are revealed.