Safety Climate Perceptions of Contingent and Permanent Employees Associated with the Manufacturing of Office Products

The purpose of this study was to investigate if there were differences in the perceived safety climate experienced by contingent employees as compared to the perceptions of permanent workers’ safety climate. Knowledge of these differences will help safety professionals provide better safety training and working conditions for contingent workers. Safety climate is defined as employees’ perceptions of safety polices, procedures, and practices (Kath, Marks, & Ranney, 2010). The population for the study included employees who work for a manufacturer of office products located in Tennessee. A total of 813 employees participated in the study with a response rate of 87% of the total population of 973 employees. The data was collected using a census. Participants solicited for this study included contingent and permanent employees of three facilities. Data were collected using the Hall Safety Climate Instrument. Data were entered into a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 20.0. Items stated in reverse order were coded to result in a higher score for each item, consistent with a more positive safety climate. Climate was measured using t-tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA). A mean of 1 to 3.4 is considered negative and a mean of 3.5 to 5 is considered positive. The study found that there was significant difference between the safety climate perceptions of contingent and permanent employees. There was no significance between the safety climate themes that were measured by the Hall Safety Climate Instrument. There were significant differences in factors that included: education, gender, length of employment, and department where employee works.