Theoretical review of safety climate in Malaysian construction industry

Abstract

In order to survive in the competitive environment, it is critical for the construction company to maintain their good performance in term of health and safety. Since the industry that has a reputation due to the high rates of incidents, injuries and fatalities, the management team needs to begin by giving attention to health and safety management approach that integrate between safety systems and people. An improvement to safety will only be achieved if all project stakeholders recognised the need to change their belief, attitude, commitment and behaviour to create a good safety culture. This paper presents an extensive literature review to highlight the need for establishing a positive safety climate towards better construction safety. Construction safety managers need to adapt more holistic strategies which focus on not only improving physical working environment and employees' safety knowledge, but also on shaping employees' beliefs and attitude which lead to safe behaviour and ultimately healthy safety culture.