Proceedings of the GOL'12 (Logistics Operations Management) Le Havre, France, October 17 – 19, 2012 Perception of the Warehousing Workers towards safety Challenges: Social Psychology Approach Huinee AuYong School of Management Universiti Sains Malaysia 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia 60-19-448 2622 ayhn@yahoo.com Suhaiza Zailani School of Management Universiti Sains Malaysia 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia 604-6533 888 Ext: 2786 shmz@usm.my Lilis Surienty School of Management Universiti Sains Malaysia 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia 604-6533 888 Ext: 3368 lilis@usm.my ABSTRACT Background - Occupational safety and health (OSH) issues have become a major concern to many corporations in Malaysia since the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994. Communicating OSH issues helps creating awareness and understanding on these issues. While safety climate has been studied in numerous industrial settings, only few studies have given attention to the logistics sector. Aims/Objectives/Purpose - The main objective is to investigate the safety behavior of the workers. Methods - Data are collected throughout the warehousing processes of an electronics manufacturer in Malaysia. A survey has been filled-up by the warehousing employees. Among others, the results obtained are examined to provide insights on various safety programs and identify employees’ preferred channel in receiving OSH information. This paper proposes the theory of planned behavior to explain the relationship between safety intention and behavior. Results/Outcome – The respondents gave feedback that occupational accident and disease almost never happen. Though, generally most of the occupational accident or disease took occurred in the material handling operations and activities with interface with the cargos. Significance/Contribution to the field – Information dissemination and co-operation between the various departments are important. Workers should be involved in the safety program so as to yield the benefits of high efficiency workforce. Keywords Logistics, occupational safety and health (OSH), safety behavior, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and warehousing. 1. INTRODUCTION Implementing prevention policies in every business saves lives and money. Physical, mental risks are inherent to some activities and business models, and organizations can ensure that the maximum is done to prevent people working for them, directly or indirectly, being harmed in the course of their work, whether the workers feel good to work for the organization The major policy concerning OSH was Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1994 that includes a general duty for employers. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), more than two million people die around the world due to work-related accidents or diseases, every year. Logistics services span over sea, air, road and rail transport, and involve various services areas, including facilitation services, distribution, integrated services and business support services. According to the Labor Force Survey, by second half of 2008, they were 11.1224 million employed persons. The number of employed persons data show that the manufacturing sector employs 1.9576 million persons (17.6%), construction sector employs 1.0142 million persons (9.1%) and Transport, Storage and Communications sector employs 0.5337 million persons (5.1%) of the work force. The Ministry of Human Resources quoted in the Harian Metro that there were 55,208 workplace accidents reported in 2009, where 20,814 cases happened during commuting to or from workplace, and 35,394 cases happened at the workplace [1]. The Occupational Death was 733 in 2006, among which 78 cases of occupational death in the transport and storage [2]. As conditions tend to be worse deeper in the supply chain, these issues are of high importance at these levels as well. The un-proportionately high occupation death in the transportation industry in contrast of the construction industry is probably due to the latter’s better OS&H management and practices as compared to the fragmented authorities in the transportation industry. There is increased attention being devoted to the area of fleet and work related road safety due to an awareness of workplace health and safety issues and the overall impact in Australia [3, 4]. Theory of reasoned action (TRA) was developed to explain individuals’ voluntary or volitional behaviors [5]. This theory has been adopted in a variety of health promotion programming settings. Hence, the change of behavior is a function of one’s beliefs about the outcomes of the behavior and an evaluation of the value of each of those outcomes [6]. Theory of planned behavior (TPB) is an extension of TRA that it offers room to address those behaviors with regard to being under volitional control of the individual [7, 8]. In this paper, we apply the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as the conceptual basis to assess differential qualities of resources, capabilities and work processes. The theoretical framework is depicted to investigate the influential factors or independent variables that may affect the safety outcome, the dependent variable. Causal attributions reflect an important link between It is hypothesized that an understanding of the beliefs that the employees hold about safety and health risks and the causes of accidents, as well as their perceptions of risk targets and the need for safety, are important precedents to effectively manage risk and design preventive measures, and ultimately reduce the occurrences of accident. The model will contribute to identifying effective ways to promote safety