• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.35-44
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• 2019

One of the key factors of a safe workplace is to communicate with the workers about safety. For this, natural gas workplace is developing and operating related programs or communication activities. But, if there are silence behavior of the workers on the safety issues in this process, no positive outcomes could be expected for the workplace. The purpose of this study is to examine how safety silence motives, silence behavior, and safety communication influence each other. A total of 233 questionnaires based on the workers of natural gas workplace (in Seoul and Gyeonggi) were analyzed. The confidence analysis is to check consistency of the questions, analysis of the correlations between factors, and regression analysis to verify the hypotheses. As a result, the safety silence motives affected safety communication more seriously than the silence behavior did. Safety communication influenced safety silence motives more significantly than the silence behavior. The safety silence motives can be one of the reasons for safety communication to fail, and it was confirmed that a good safety communication does not necessary mean that there is no safety silence motivation. Based on such results, it is expected that improving and developing the safety communication activities of the workplace, it would improve safety in workplace in general.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.192-200
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• 2021

Background: A number of accidents have occurred in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Efforts in reducing accidents have been undertaken through the implementation of safety behaviors. Unfortunately, few studies have examined motives behind unsafe behaviors, such as safety silence motives. This study aimed to observe the motives underlying safety behaviors, namely safety silence motive (SSM) (SSM-relation, SSM-climate, SSM-issue, and SSM-job) and to evaluate the effect of SSM and safety communication on safety participation in different industrial sectors and scales. Materials and Methods: Eighty workers from two industrial sectors and scales of SMEs were involved. They were instructed to fill out a set of questionnaires. A five-Likert scale was used to respond. An independent t test was applied to find any significant differences. The partial least square-structural equation modeling for multigroup was used to develop a model on relations among the variables. Results: The results showed that SSM scores were high in SMEs, and the scores were different across industrial sectors and scales. SSM had a negative influence on safety communication, and safety communication positively influenced safety participation. Conclusion: The study of SSM, safety communication, and safety participation in different sectors and scales should be separated in SMEs.