Occupational Health and Safety in Small Enterprises: A Field Study in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This research aims at familiarizing the business environment in Small Enterprises (SEs) in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia with occupational accidents that occur due to the lack of interest and belief of the enterprise administration in this issue, a trained supervisor, and the non-compliance of workers with the rules and regulations of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS). It also demonstrates the role of Civil Defense in reducing the number of such accidents. The research makes some recommendations that may contribute to improving the OHS level. A survey questionnaire was distributed among 170 employees, supervisors, and owners of SEs. This survey was conducted before the development of questions required for the study. The results of the study have shown that there is a statistically significant correlation between the reduction of OHS and the administration's belief in adopting and implementing OHS systems. Also, there are statistically significant differences between the reduction of OHS accidents, the workers' personal characteristics, their technical qualification and training, and their manners and awareness. Moreover, the results have shown that workers do not care about the use of OHS means, and are not willing to use modern technology. The study recommends that the enterprise administration should pay attention to adopting OHS systems and creating an accident-free work environment. This is in addition to working side by side with workers, encouraging them to use the OHS means, giving them their rights, appointing trained supervisors, cooperating with Civil Defense especially in cases of any accidents, using modern technology, and getting insurance coverage for workers and the enterprise assets.

Assessment of the Quality of Job Descriptions of Safety Jobs in the Saudi Companies

“…ISSN 2377-3219 2018 The job descriptions from the other sectors had moderate quality, such as manufacturing (3.6±0.2), education/training (3.5±1.0), construction (3.5±0.9) and SRD (3.3±0.6). The low quality of job descriptions from these sectors is in line with the low OSH performance found in other studies related to manufacturing sector (Al-Ghamri, 2017;Noweir, et al, 2013) and construction sector (Mosly, 2015;Al Haadir and Panuwatwanich, 2011). Furthermore, Kadasah (2015) concluded that the service sector and educational institutions came far after manufacturing sector in OSH performance.…”

“…The official bodies necessitate that companies adopt OSH policies and also to pay great attention to the importance of safety means (Al-Ghamri, 2017). The reasons behind such growing interest in OSH are many, of which the low level of safety performance found in many studies (Taylan et al, 2017;Alsubaie, 2017;Ahmed et al, 2017;Al-Qubaisi, 2016;Mosly, 2015;Alolah et al, 2014;Noweir et al, 2013;Al Haadir and Panuwatwanich, 2011;Hassanain and Al-Mudhei, 2006) is an important one.…”

“…It is worth mentioning that Noweir et al (2013) found that only approximately third of the companies in their sample had safety specialist. On the other hand, Al-Ghamri (2017) recommended that qualified OSH personnel should be hired to improve the OSH performance of small Saudi companies. However, this cannot be achieved unless the roles and responsibilities of the safety professional in an organization as well as the required competencies and qualifications are well-defined.…”