Current Safety Culture among Laboratory Users of the Faculty of Engineering in Universiti Putra Malaysia

Abstract

Accidents involving higher learning institutes laboratories are no longer a worldwide issue. There is a huge gap between how safety is practiced in industry compared to how it is practiced in research laboratories, especially in an academic setting. For effective implementation of the safety management system, it is necessary to have a strong and positive safety culture throughout the organization. The investigation to the safety culture (SC) practices level and performances among laboratory’s users in the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia will be assessed, evaluated and recommended some of the improvement towards SC in UPM.  The assessment is done through the distribution of safety culture questionnaire adapted from Hudson’s safety culture element and a publication by American Chemical Society and the results will be based on rating distribution. The safety culture survey resulted in an overall score of µ=3.98 (µ<4.0) which indicates that the level of safety culture among laboratory users are moderate and less proactive. Observation from the audit evaluation suggested that there are still room of improvement for the safety performance. It is deduced from this study that the safety culture and safety performance are inter-related to each other. Therefore, to achieve higher safety performance, one needs to have an improvement in safety culture change in their organization.