Joanna Sadłowska-Wrzesińska

IT Tool for Aiding Assessment of Safety Culture Level in an Organization

The following paper presents an IT tool for aiding assessment of a safety culture level in an organization in a form of an application, providing fast and easy way to analyze data obtained from questionnaires. Traditional data analysis often turns out to be time-consuming and labor-intensive. To make the process faster, more detailed and to find all the possible links among all the available data there is a need for an IT tool. The presented application has been developed with publicly available and completely free tools and technologies. It is a complete piece of software, fully flexible which can be modified or equipped with new functions (modules). The presented solution eliminates the time consuming process of “copying” data from paper questionnaires, and allows to get information about the safety culture level right after adding a questionnaire to a questionnaire database. The presented tool can function as a mobile questionnaire which can be used in any place with Internet access and to fill it in only a browser is required.

Stressful work characteristics, health indicators and work behavior: the case of machine operators

This article shows the results of research on psychosocial risks for a group of machine and plant operators (n = 1014) from the construction, chemical, energy, mining, metal and food industries in Poland. The Psychosocial Risk Scale designed in Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (NIOM) by Moscicka-Teske and Potocka was used to indicate the occurrence of general and specific occupational stressors and the level of their stressfulness. The results revealed that the studied machine and plant operators experience job context stress – related to working environment features concerning work organization – more frequently than job content stressors – related to the type of tasks they perform. Moreover, a correlation analysis between work features and the health and occupational functioning of the respondents revealed significant but weak relationships between the variables (from −0.08 to −0.23). Comparative analysis revealed the differences between the studied sectors. Such a comparison makes it possible to set goals for each sector and to attempt to improve the distinctive areas.

Assessment of Safety and Health of Storage Workers - a Psychosocial Approach

Background: Although there is still a lot to do as far as prevention and elimination of traditional health and work safety hazards is concerned, the problem of psychosocial risk prevention is extremely important nowadays. It is crucial to take into consideration the health of workers and promotion of health in the workplace, as the occupational stress epidemics is getting more and more widespread. Methods: The article is based on the statistic analysis of accidents at work as well as the analysis of health problems resulting from the job itself. The latest work safety reports have been reviewed and special attention has been paid to psychosocial risk analysis. The author has tried to explicate the terms of new and emerging risks as regards storage work. Results: Various threat aspects of storage work have been evaluated. Deficits in psychosocial hazard identification have been indicated. What is more, no correlation between occupational tasks of storage workers and their knowledge about psychosocial risks has been emphasized. An exemplified approach to warehouse psychosocial threat identification has been presented. The approach is based on the diagnosis of the current situation. Conclusions: The psychosocial risk of storage work may lead to health deterioration, greater accident risk and worse performance at work. Such consequences mean that the psychosocial risks affect both an individual and the organization. Therefore, we should expect more intense efforts to increase psychosocial risk awareness of both employers and

Innovations in OSH Trainings - Social Skills of Safety Instructor Versus On-line Training

A systemic approach to the issue of safety which participation of both workers and managerial staff is a part of is a trusted way of creating safety culture. The implementation of safe work in everyday practice is not easy, but possible. The OSH specialist plays a key role here, as changing workers’ attitudes and values is an effective way to improve safety at the workplace. The OSH specialist must have high professional qualifications, including social competence. He most often acts as a safety educator or safety instructor. The article presents results of the research conducted on a group of 215 workers. The workers underwent the obligatory OSH training, after which the increase of their knowledge was analysed. What is more, their subjective preferences as to the form of OSH training were later determined.

IT Training - Lecturer or E-Learning? Case Study

Computers are more and more often used in training people. One of the most popular methods in this respect is e-learning. One of its biggest advantages is that the student may choose the best time and place to learn, as well as the pace of learning. Thanks to constant access to the material he may come back to difficult issues, analyze them again or comment on forums. It is a convenient solution for people who for some reasons cannot participate in traditional indoor training and therefore are unable to access the whole material. However, contemporary training didactics emphasizes teamwork skills. It is more and more often indicated that teamwork has an inspiring influence on the workers. It boosts their activity, co-operation, rational work management and responsibility for real effects. The article presents the score of an exam in Information Technology. The exam was taken by bachelor degree students of logistics. 160 students took part in the research. A part of the students learned the material with a teacher and the other part through e-learning. The research shows the diversification of stores of both groups. The aim of this article is to show that using not the whole e-learning system, but only its certain elements leads to lower effectiveness of education process.