Investigating reasons for employees' silence against HSE anomalies

Abstract

Introduction This study tried to determine the causes of HSE’s silence by using the HSE silence questionnaire. Methods This questionnaire was in English, and after translation and localization, validity and reliability were evaluated. The sample size was determined using a pilot study of 502 cases. After obtaining the necessary permissions, the researcher completed the questionnaire. The data from the questionnaire was entered into the software, and it was determined after analyzing and evaluating the influential factors in employees’ silence. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were checked and confirmed using CVR, CVI, ICC, and Cronbach’s alpha. To analyze the reasons for employee silence about the organization’s size, the variance was used to determine the contribution of each dimension of the questionnaire to employee silence from the mean and standard deviation and to determine the effect of demographic characteristics on employee silence; an independent t-test was used. Results The average total score of employee silence in large companies is 79.09 and in medium companies 66.94 and small companies 81.4 wich indicate the high level of silence. The leading cause of employee silence was related to the type of job (Mean=12.44) and the type of anomaly (Mean=18.56). The reason associated with job is related to the lack of HSE job descriptions in the positions. In this way, because the employees are not responsible for HSE, they also refrain from reporting HSE issues. The causes related to anomaly depend on the knowledge of the employees about the risk and hazard. Sometimes employees see unsafe conditions or actions but refuse to report them due to low-risk perception and lack of knowledge. In small companies, the organizational climate is more important (Mean=28.8), and the employee is silent mainly because of the climate. In large companies, the most crucial reason was related to relationships (Mean=25.16). In medium-sized companies, no significant relationship was observed regarding the causes of employee silence (P-value>0.001). Regarding the relationship between the cause of employee silence and demorophic characteristics only the organizational climate had a significant relationship with job experience (P-value<0.001). Employees with the work experience higher than 7 years are mostly silence because of the organizational climate. Other demographic characteristics hadn’t significant relationship with employee’s silence. Discussion The level of HSE silence in studied companies was high. Considering that the size of companies was effective on the cause of silence, each of the companies should work on specific cause in order to be able to remove the obstacles on the path os employee’s participation and make a necessary use of benefits of employee participation.