What description should be used for the behaviour of a worker in a health and safety compliant workplace but ends the day’s work to face a society with little or no health and safety culture?
Can we imagine that the experience of commuting and living in a less health and safety cultured environment sometimes affect worker’s compliance at work?
Will the evidence-based belief in the supreme being or the supernatural that most times reflect in the behaviour and living in a poor health and safety cultured environment overshadow the training and teachings of growing health and safety management system at work?
How effective will it be to switch (most times as the environment demands) from acting based on training and system that promote health & safety and relating with family, friends and foes in a different cultural perspective to safety?
I am amazed by how workers who comply with health and safety regulation are easily influenced by what happens outside the facility. They most times join in the act.
“In behaviour-based conflict, a behaviour that is effective in one role is inappropriately applied to the other role reducing one’s effectiveness in the role” (1).
The relationship between life at work and life outside work is formed by the concept of role. Although the role is described as the duty of a person or of a thing, it is also expressed as the sum of the specified behaviour what one can or cannot do within the limits of his/her status (2). The role conflict emerges as the result of the incompatibility of the individual’s roles; expected behavioural role due to his/her social position and his/her other roles (3). The conflicts between roles arise from the pressure that restrains an individual from participating in other roles (4).
Above excerpt from the scientific journals inform that there is such thing as behavioural conflict.
The experience a worker has lived with would have configured how to react. The new training and developing culture in a health and safety management system is meant to create a new experience.
Dr Caroline Leaf (a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist) penned in her The Perfect You book that ‘The mind controls your brain. Your brain does not control your mind. You change your brain; your brain cannot just change itself. When you think, feel, and choose, you are updating your experience, and this is reflected in structural and functional changes in your brain.’
Could it be that experience from what happens outside the facility affects the worker behaviour towards health and safety?
Let us explore what typically happens outside the facility.
- Commuting home from work:
Worker closes safely to go back to his family after the day’s activities. Experiences commuting home could be considered as influencing factors on worker’s behavior to Health and safety compliance.
We can all testify to behavioural happenings and its consequences on our roads, ranging from road rage to fatal accidents.
In 2013, WHO reported that deaths from road traffic crash in 2010 were 33.7/100,000 (Nigeria), 22.2/100,000 (Ghana) and 31.2/100,000 (South Africa)
The failure of drivers to comply with basic road safety legislation is the main cause of serious crashes (5). This means actions and inaction of drivers to comply with guidelines that ensure safe commuting are so evident that it is the main cause of serious crashes.
Compliance in road safety is the act of obedience to rules guiding the usage of the roads, by road users. The sequential objectives of these rules are; to avoid conflicts among road users; prevent events that are unpleasant to road users; and mitigate the effects of the unpleasant event. Non-compliance carries penalty. (6)
Fela Durotoye in his #Value 4 YouTube video (7) shared how by stopping for the red light triggered the anger of the car driver behind him. This typically is what a worker is faced with commuting home.
Sometimes, these unsafe behaviours are encouraged when a driver that passes one way arrives earlier unhindered, or exceeding recommended speed limit takes you home on time, making it look like unsafe behaviour is a better option.
Again,
Can we imagine that the experience of commuting and living in a less health and safety cultured environment sometimes affect workers compliance at work?
Will the evidence-based belief in the supreme being or the supernatural that most times reflect in actions and living in a poor health and safety culture overshadow the training and teachings of growing health and safety management system at work?
How effective will it be to switch (most times as the environment demands) from acting based on training and system that promote health & safety and relating with family, friends and foes in a different cultural perspective to safety?
Reference
- Greenhaus, J. H., Allen, T. D., & Spector, P. E. (Forthcoming). Health consequences of work-family conflict: The dark side of the work-family interface. In Perrewe, P. L., & Ganster, D. C. (Eds.), Research in occupational stress and well-being, vol. 5. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
- Aksu, 2014: p. 71
- Michael R. Froneand Robert W. Rice. Source: Journal of Occupational Behaviour,. Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 46
- Greenhaus, J. H., & Beutell, N. J. Sources of conflict between work and family roles. Academy of Management Review, 1985, 77.
- European Commission, 2003:17
- Arosanyin Godwin Tunde, Olowosulu Adekunle Taiwo, Oyeyemi Gafar Matanmi (2012). Compliance with Road Safety Regulations Among Commercial Motorcyclists in Nigeria. Canadian Social Science, 8 (1), 92-100
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlsnVQFdaGsWritten by: Ifeoluwa Adeniji, Business Center Manager, Hybrid Group Limited