Abstract
Safety at the workplace, both in terms of concept and practice, is a great area of concern for companies (Janadi & Assaf, 1998). The concept of safety itself has evolved over the years, from the initial plain-sense approach to averting agents of injury to the current complex methodology for the defined management of harm at the workplace. Issues relating to compliance of safety standards and the widespread problem of underreporting injuries/incidents have forced an increasing number of companies to adopt safety management systems (Al-Jubrab et. al., 2010). Nonetheless, implementation of the safety standards has continuously proven problematic for companies with the best safety control programs in place. As such, injurious incidences are commonplace at the workplace regardless of the full knowledge of their causes and the availability of approved controls.
This paper proposes to research the reasons for underreporting of incidents and/or injuries at the Saudi Aramco Fire Protection Department. Survey questionnaire and interviews will be used to gather relevant data from 5% population of the approximately 1400 employees with a minimum of two years working experience at the company. The study will involve firefighters, fire Instructors, fire fixed system technicians, safety advisors, fire officers, fire chiefs, fire engineers, fire protection advisors, planning group, and fire marshals.
Introduction
1.1. Background
Safety at the workplace is such a critical issue, because of its humanitarian elements. It is paramount for safety issues to be addressed as a part of the corporate Safety, Health and Environment Policies, in addition to the development of safety management systems, as well as safety goals and objectives (Saudi Aramco, 2007). Management needs to ensure its entire workforce, understands and complies with safety standards as outlined in the company safety plan, and the international standards. This can be achieved through strict adherence to safety rules and an effective safety plan; organizations can solve, reduce, or eliminate altogether the unfortunate consequences resulting from safety violations (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2011).
This research examines the issue of safety at Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabia’s national oil company headquartered in Dhahran with subsidiaries in Europe, North America, and the Far East. The company is fully integrated, global petroleum enterprise besides being a world leader in production, exploration, refining, distribution, shipment and marketing. Saudi Aramco manages large crude oil reserves of 2.601 billion barrels and approximately 279 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves (Nolan, 2011).
1.2. Statement of the Problem
The safety programs at Saudi Aramco, despite the independent safety management programs, do not operate efficiently (Kirsten & Karch, 2011). The company has a range of compliance issues to Safety Standards, which are influenced by several factors. Similarly, there is insufficient reporting of incidents/injuries at Saudi Aramco.
1.3. Significance of the Research
In view of the growing cases of health and safety standards violations in large organizations, it is important to understand the state of compliance to safety standards, the factors and reasons for underreporting of incidents at Saudi Aramco (a world leader in petroleum industry).
1.4. Objectives of the Study
General Objectives
The general objective of this research project is to understand the state of compliance and non-compliance to reporting incidents at Saudi Aramco.
Specific objectives
The specific objectives for this research study are in three-fold as stated below:
1. Examine the issues of compliance to Safety Standards
2. Identify the possible factors affecting safety culture
3. Identify the possible reasons for underreporting incidents / injuries
1.5. Research Questions
The research study shall have three research questions as follows:
1. What are the issues of compliance to Safety Standards at Saudi Aramco?
2. What are factors influencing safety culture at Saudi Aramco?
3. What are the reasons for underreporting incidents/injuries at Saudi Aramco?
1.6. Limitations of the Study
The scope of this study is limited to Saudi Aramco. The first delimiting step was the choice of the problem itself where safety was chosen from a long list of potential topical areas, such as state of compliance to safety among Middle East companies, safety issues among Saudi Arabian enterprises, and health and safety improvements in Saudi companies. Saudi Amarco is chosen because of its leading stature in the global petroleum industry and the increasing limelight on the company on the issue of safety standards in the recent days. This report shall seek to identify the likely reasons for underreporting injuries and incidences at Saudi Amarco.
Chapter II – Literature Review
According to Fogarty and Shaw (2010), workers attribute several reasons for failing to report their injuries while at the workplace: fear of reprisal, a myth that pain was a normal outcome of work activity, history of management inaction after injury/incidence reports, and need to remain at their usual job. Mearns et al (2001) argued that management pose administrative and other barriers to injury/incidence reporting because of desire to have a clean record of no reported injuries/incidents, and misconceptions regarding requirements for recordability. A research by Beus et al’s (2010) has shown that corporate and facility safety incentives have an indirect yet significant negative impact on the appropriate reporting of workplace injuries by employees. A study by Shaw et al 2007 noted recordable injury logs to have little appeal compared to worker surveys and symptom reports which offer more valuable and timely information relating to risks at the workplace. Further researches (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2009), showed that many companies do not provide safety incentive programmes to serve as a stimulus for safety-related changes that would in turn discourage under-reporting.
Probst (2009) studied incident under-reporting with 426 workers drawn from five industries and came to the conclusion that under-reporting was highest in workplaces having poorer safety climate scores as well as in industries with inconsistent supervisor safety enforcement.
In other research, Hasle et al (2010), Danish businesses were found to attribute causes of accidents to worker faults and thus did not find it necessary to report. Similarly, Haines study research of workplace fatalities in Australian Victoria construction firms (Haines, 1997) revealed that supervisors put the burden for death to the deceased worker or held that the workplace death were beyond their control.
Chapter III – Methodology
This study will be carried out on one organization of Aramco organizations which is Fire Protection Department. From a review of literature study, a survey questionnaire will be developed to collect data for the study. Data will be collected through use of a written questionnaire either hand-delivered or via the company intranet to participants. The population of Fire Protection Department (FrPD) is approximately 1400 employees; where the survey will be distributed to a sample of 5% of FrPD population covering all levels of the department employees who has a minimum of two years experience with FrPD. The target population of this study will cover Firefighters, Fire Instructors, Fire Fixed System Technicians, Safety Advisors, Fire Officers, Fire Chiefs, Fire Engineers, Fire Protection Advisors, Planning Group, and Fire Marshals. The questionnaire will be distributed to 70 people.
The respondents will have to be current employees of Saudi Aramco, with at least two years working experience at the company. The study shall seek to be gender sensitive in that a balance between men and women shall be sought as much as possible. The sample shall also be drawn from all departments of the company. The research team will try as much as possible to diminish or avert altogether all potential sources of bias and error. Safety compliance and noncompliance bias, and over-reporting, and underreporting bias will be of great significance to the validity of the research results. The research will be conducted within four weeks and it is expected that the interview session per respondent will not exceed 1 hour. This shall cater for additional two open-ended questions allowed for every interviewer.
3.1. Research Design
(i) Selection of Research Strategies
The selected respondents, as defined above, shall be interview by our team of professional interviewers using a pre-constructed questionnaire. Both primary and secondary research methods shall be employed for this study. In addition, descriptive approach method will be used. The descriptive type of study will utilize observations. The descriptive approach of research is most suitable for this study, because it will help to collect information about the current existing state of affairs at Saudi Aramco as relates to compliance and noncompliance with safety standards. Primary, research will be conducted using questionnaires on randomly selected Saudi Aramco employees. Questionnaires shall be used to provide qualitative understanding of the data gathered. Secondary, data will be sourced from relevant recent literatures.
(ii) Selection of Research Setting
The selection of study respondents will be carried out in the facilities of Saudi Aramco Company. The setting shall be stationed away from the administration offices, as it is possible to encourage freedom of expression among the respondents. First, a small pilot survey involving 15 participant will be conducted to test the comprehension and language appropriateness of the questionnaire.
3.2. Sources of Data
As mentioned earlier, this research shall utilize both primary and secondary sources of data.
i) Questionnaires
The nature of questionnaires for this study is described above (in methodology).
ii) Interviews
The research team shall conduct a series of in-depth interviews with selected employees of Saudi Aramco. These will take approximately one hour. The interviews will provide an opportunity for depth discussions in relation to key research issues. Furthermore, the process shall also serve to develop a series of personal narratives of worker experiences in terms of safety at the company. All the interviews shall be transcribed and developed into an exact narrative form. The research proposal shall allow for a small manageable sample of 50 respondents.
iii) Documented Data
The third source of data for this research will be data retrieved from recent studies on the subject matter. This shall include previous studies by other researchers, books, articles and narratives.
3.3. Instrumentation
The instruments for data collection for this research will include questionnaire and interview schedules. First, there will be preparation, pre-coding and then pretesting of questionnaires. The questionnaire for this study will be structured to minimize any interviewer or respondent bias. Then, the research team will plan interviews and call-backs of the respondents (employees of Saudi Aramco). This shall be followed by training of the interviews by the research team.
3.4. Validity and Reliability
To ensure validity and reliability of the results collected, the research team shall play the listener’s role and allow the respondent to offer the bulk of the research input. The team shall strive to interpret correctly the responses of the interviewees. There shall be accurate recording, both in form of detailed notes and electronic, of the accounts gathered from the respondents. The records will be developed during the data gathering session as opposed to after (Al-Jubrab et. al., 2010). The research team shall also critique the study manuscript following the developmental process. As such, professional and research subjects shall be part of the process to ensure accuracy and completeness of the information reported.
Further, primary data will be incorporated in the final report to allow the reader to make out the basis upon which conclusions and recommendations were reached. All data shall be included in the final report, including that to which clear interpretation by the research team was proved difficult. The reader shall be allowed to draw their own interpretations and conclusions. Finally, the report will be double-checked to reed it of any grammatical errors and inconsistencies that would otherwise compromise the validity of the report (Al-Kudmani, 2008).
3.5. Analysis and Interpretation
Data processing and analysis will be aided by the use of computer. This study will base its results through both qualitative research approaches, because it allows for a flexible and interpretive approach. As such, the choice and design of methods will be constantly modified on the basis of the ongoing analysis (Ross & Sloan, 2007). This research will also use qualitative research approach, because it will seek to find and build theories to understand the relationship of one variable to another through qualitative elements. Qualitative elements that lack standard measures e.g. opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior within the company will be analyzed.
3.6. Data Collection Procedure
Permission to conduct the research will be obtained from management of Saudi Aracom. All the participants should be first briefed about our research design, objectives of the study, the sampling method, data collection methods and the data collection procedure in its entirety. Verbal concessions will be taken from individual participants regarding their involvement in the research study (Mesch, 2010). Several meetings will be held with the research team to settle their doubt, to ascertain the completeness of data and to find solutions to any issues that arose during the research.
Reflection
The greatest challenge in this project would be obtaining accurate reliable data to facilitate statistical and quantitative analysis. While I am a current employee with the Fire Department at Saudi Aramco, it must be admitted that gathering such sensitive is rather challenging especially for a conservative nature of Asian companies. Another source of worry is the sample size targeted for this research (5 percent of 1400 employees of the Fire Department). The sample seems too small and thus not truly representational of opinions of population; this may compromise the credibility of the findings and the conclusions for the final report.
Another likely source of concern is the insufficiency of previous research on the issue of noncompliance and underreporting of incidents/injuries particularly in companies located in the Gulf Region. The issue is likely to draw dichotomous views with no consensus view among the participants.
The interpretation and analysis methods proposed for this research are appropriate, meaning that there should not be a problem at this stage. The timeframe (1 month or four consecutive weeks) is also sufficient for the research team to gather relevant information, analyze, and prepare a report. Finally, there is no doubt that the entire research will be in line with the objectives and research questions set out.
Conclusion
This research proposal has the objective of understanding compliance and non-compliance of reporting incidents in Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian oil company. First the study examines the issues of compliance to safety standards in the company. Factors affecting safety culture at Aramco are then identified. Finally, the study explores the possible reasons for underreporting incidents/injuries at the oil company. Questionnaires and interviews are used to gather information from a small representation of Saudi Aramco’s employees. The research is conducted within two weeks and analysis and interpretation done by the research team with the help of computer.
Timetable
The research will be conducted within four weeks (1 month).
Task Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4
Literature review
Data gathering
Statistical quantitative analysis
Write up
Submission
References:
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Al-Kudmani, S. A. (2008). Building a Safety Culture-Our Experience in Saudi Aramco. Retrieved from: http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=SPE-111852-MS
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