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Industry has long held to the belief that accidents are caused and they can be prevented. To support this belief, industry in the United States has allocated vast resources for accident prevention. The rationale for this allocation of resources rests on the concern for employees' well-being, federal and state regulations, and the profit incentive. In order to test the most feasible and effective program to generate safety awareness and teach specific safety skills, a system of daily reinforcement using an in-plant cable tablevision capability was conceptualized, designed, implemented and tested. This study presents the findings for the Safety Minutes program which was tested during a thirty-day period at the Louisiana division of a large chemical company. From the nineteen plants (operating units) in the company's Louisiana division, eight plants were randomly selected to participate in the study. Five different safety messages were prepared and each worker (plant operator) was exposed to a specific video message an average of four times during the study period. Three plants were randomly selected as control groups and comparisons were made between those plants in which operators saw the messages and those plants in which the operators did not. The Safety Minutes project was shown at the beginning of each shift and presented a brief (five to eight minutes) sports special with a "commercial" provided by the division's safety department during the middle of the presentation. The Safety Minutes were shown to be highly effective as a teaching tool and as a stimulator for safety awareness. Significant differences were found in the levels of safety awareness between control and experimental groups with those individuals viewing Safety Minutes showing higher levels of safety awareness. Safety Minutes viewers were also consistently able to recall the Safety Minute "commercial" messages. In general, employees viewing the Safety Minutes project rated the Safety Minutes higher on nine safety program attributes than those individuals in the control groups who rated the existing safety program on the same attributes. Analysis of the Safety Minutes project also suggested areas which could be improved should the project be adopted on an ongoing basis.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/steve-miller/5/