Literature Review
A review of indicates that there are many challenges workers face in the workplace apart from health threats, like chemicals, toxins, flammable or combustible materials. Other challenges employees face is underemployment, job security, unemployment, highly competitive work environment, dead-end jobs, harassment, and discrimination among others (Jones, 1996). These challenges according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health make the workplace hazardous for employees. Therefore, the practicing of occupational health and safety must consider dealing with physical, chemical, biological, and psychological agents (Reeve, 2005). The manager seeking to improve the safety and health of the workplace must identify and deal with hazardous agents, broadly categorized as human physiology, biological agents, chemical agents, and physical agents like vibrations, thermal temperature, lighting, and noise. Other factors that create a hostile work environment include tight monitoring, exposure to technologies and control techniques, and use of personal protection (Reeve, 2005). Therefore, hazards in the workplace are not only in the industrial sector with blue-collar jobs, but are also in the office with white-collar job roles.
Various studies have investigated and produced evidence that shows different factors contribute to the creation of hazardous work environments in any organization from any industry. The study by Mearns et al. (2004) finds that apart from physical and biological factors, social and organizational factors have an impact on the health and safety of employees. To prove this, the researchers carried out a questionnaire survey study on Norwegian and UK offshore employees. They gathered responses on scales that measured factors like satisfaction with safety measures, risk perception, attitudes to safety, perception of the job situation, perception of social support, and commitment to safety (Mearns et al., 2004). The study provides evidence that even in the heavy industry, employees find that organizational and social factors play a crucial role in determining their feelings towards accident and safety employed in the workplace. Despite the variance, the most noteworthy factors that determine the health and safety of the workplace are management’s commitment to safety, and attitudes to safety. Other factors are the features of the job situation like decision-making and communication, and their effects on the working environment.
The influence of social and psychological factors on the health and safety of the workplace are supported by the studies of that indicate that individual and environmental factors affect the workplace behavior. Nair’s (2007) results indicate that employee’s motivation and willingness to share knowledge with others is under the influence of individual factors like learner readiness, emotional stability, and self-efficacy. These factors prevent the employee from participating as an equal team player thereby creating a hostile environment for working teams and reducing the safety and health of the organization (Nair, 2007). The results of such studies indicate that in the last decade academic and scholars have shifted their focus from the traditional hostile work environments, to consider hazardous environments due to various factors apart from psychological and organizational. A second shift in the study is the evaluation of different workplace practices from other disciplines like project management and human resources, to determine factors that create hazardous environments as seen with Mearns et al. (2004) and Nair (2007). Currently, efforts in investigating hazardous factors that reduce the quality of safety and health of a workplace make links with an employee’s job satisfaction.
A recent study by Sunal, Sunal, & Yasin (2011) investigated the role job satisfaction, stress symptoms, perception of job risk, and vulnerabilities of stress affect workers in industries like mining, dock, sandblasting, and factories. A survey of 220 workers testing the hypotheses based on the scale for job satisfaction and stress, with the subscales of physical conditions, individual factors, organizational policies, autonomy and wage, and interpersonal relations. The results indicate that job satisfaction is predicted by vulnerability to stress, stress symptoms, and perceived job risk thereby affecting the safety and health of the workplace (Sunal, Sunal, & Yasin, 2011). However, the investigation of the factors that cause hazardous work environments is not a recent study.
This is indicated by earlier empirical surveys carried out by Hofman and Stetzer (1996), which studied the role organizational factors play as antecedents to industrial accidents. The study investigated factors like safety climate, group process, intentions to approach team engaged in an unsafe act, and individual factors like perception of the role. Hofman and Stetzer (1996) found that these factors were influential in causing industrial accidents because they affected the employees in acquiring unsafe behaviors. Unsafe behaviors are those employees engage in which are contrary to organizational culture, rules, and regulations. These early studies are useful for they have contributed to the identification of organizational factors like performance pressure, defective communication leading to errors in information processing, and social pressures (Hofman & Stetzer, 1996).
Therefore, following the review of literature it is evident that the hazards that make the workplace hostile are changing and increasing, hence calling for the identification of lasting solutions to mitigate the issue. The fact that psychological, organizational and social factors are intertwined with factors like job satisfaction and perception of job role, calls for the search for ways to reduce such factors to avoid hostile or hazardous environments.
References
Hofman, D. & Stetzer, A. (1996). A cross-level investigation of factors influencing unsafe behaviors and accidents. Personnel Psychology, ABI/INFORM, 49(2), 307-339.
Jones, L. K. (1996). A harsh and challenging world of work: Implications for counselors. Journal of Counseling and Development : JCD, 74(5), 453-453.
Mearns, K., Rundmo, T., Flin, R., Gordon, R., & Fleming, M. (2004). Evaluation of psychosocial and organizational factors in offshore safety: a comparative study. Journal of Risk Research, 7(5), 545-561.
Nair, P. K. (2007). A path analysis of relationships among job stress, job satisfaction, motivation to transfer, and transfer of learning: Perceptions of occupational safety and health administration outreach trainers. Texas A&M University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , 194-n/a.
Reeve, P. (2005). Health and safety: Hazardous agents. The Safety & Health Practitioner, 23(2), 58-58.
Sunal, A.B., Sunal, O., & Yasin, F. (2011). A Comparison of Workers Employed in Hazardous Jobs in Terms of Job Satisfaction, Perceived Job Risk and Stress: Turkish Jean Sandblasting Workers, Dock Workers, Factory Workers and Miners. Soc Indic Res 102, 265-273.
