PAULUS SUKAPTO et al: A NEW APPROACH TO THE ASSESSMENT OF THE SAFETY ENVIRONMENT AND . . DOI 10.5013/IJSSST.a.19.05.14 14.1 ISSN: 1473-804x online, 1473-8031 print A New Approach to the Assessment of the Safety Environment and Performance in the Footwear Industry Paulus Sukapto*, Harjoto Djojosoebroto, Bonita, Sani Susanto, Paulina K. Ariningsih Industrial Engineering Department, Parahyangan Catholic University Jl. Ciumbuleuit 94, Bandung, Indonesia 40141 Email: paulus@unpar.ac.id Abstract - Safety climate refers to an individual’s perception of safety in the workplace, which is essential in the labor-intensive industries, one of which is the footwear industry. References about the implementation of safety climate measurements are still lacking. This study focuses on the safety climate amongst management and employees, the correlation between climates and safety performance, along with the employees’ perspective in safety management in a footwear company in Bandung. Indonesian translations of Nordic Occupational Safety Climate Questionnaire responses from 163 employees and ten supervisors (managers) were verified by observations of workplace conditions coupled with informal discussions with the supervisors. Findings show that safety perception of the managers is similar to the employees. From the observations of the workplace conditions and discussions with the members of the industry, the managers’ responses reflected the espoused policies. Meaning, there is an indication of misalignment between the espoused policies and enacted practices. Several managerial implications are suggested to develop a better safety climate. Keywords - safety climate, safety system performance, safe behavior, footwear industry, nosacq-50 I. INTRODUCTION Safety climate refers to the perceptions of work environment (1–3). The work environment corresponds to organizational policies, procedures and practices. Perceived safety climate represents individual perceptions of work environment (3). Individuals evaluate specific features of the environment based on their personal values for the overall well-being. Therefore, safety climate deals with the individual perceptions which involve individuals’ assessments towards workplace safety attributes, e.g., employee’s outlooks about management values for safety and personnel policies about safety. Perception is defined as the ways in which an environment presents itself to the individual. Perception is a process of interpreting a stimulus, or a series of stimuli by the brain through one of the sensory mechanisms. The way an individual interprets incoming information will lead to the formation of perception. The perceptual processes begin with responses to incoming stimuli by an individual. Stimuli may be accepted, rejected, or ignored; which is strongly based on the beliefs, values, and attitudes of an individual. Finally, the selected stimuli are organized to produce meanings to a specific individual. These perceptual processes are associated with the knowledge, skills and experience of an individual, and there may be some correlation between these skills and the potential for accidents. Errors in perceptions are one of the contributing factors in many accidents(4). Safety climate provides a framework to guide safety behavior of employees in the workplace (5). In this respect, employees develop perceptions and expectations regarding safety outcomes and behave accordingly(4,5). Safety behavior, that is, the behavior that influences safety, describes the actual behavior that individuals perform at work. Individuals generally evaluate their environment in terms of their personal values for their overall well-being (6). Safety behavior is determined by the 3 determinants of individual performance: knowledge, skill and motivation. These determinants represent factors that are responsible for individual differences in safety performance, i.e. safety compliance and safety participation. Safety compliance reflects activities that have to be performed by individuals to maintain workplace safety. Safety participation depicts behavior that may not directly contribute workplace safety, but helps to develop an environment to support safety (7,8). The footwear industry in Indonesia is fundamentally labor-intensive. In the industrial system engineering point of view, where the human is the center of the system, safety climate measurement is critical. Labor-intensive work practices are still common in the fashion and footwear, cleaning, farming, some of the mining industries. However, references regarding implementation of standardized and valid questionnaires in labor-intensive industry are scarce. Therefore, a case study will be valuable for both practitioners and academics. In addition to describing the implementation of the methods, this study also aims to describe complex problems that common labor-intensive businesses face. The current study aims to describe the improvement of safety system management (safety engineering) by focusing on the levels of safety climate management and employees, as well as safety management from the