Safety Environment in Manufacturing Industry

Basically factory is a social system; as group of people works together, gratification and non-gratification of needs has its impact on human behavior. Thus their work life can be motivated by safety needs. But Lack of Safety behavior and safety performance is observed in various industries. For improving the safety culture and behavior of the employee, industry needs to provide training, education, meeting, review etc. This paper deals with safety management awareness amongst shop floor employee, for creating safety lifestyle at workplace, as well as those who are associated with manufacturing industry.

It is imperative to spread awareness of occupational health hazards amongst the huge working population. They need to be sensitized to the long-term detrimental effects of the environment that they work in and what precautions can be taken to mitigate these effects. The awareness is sorely missing even in the employees of industries in the emerging economies. But things cannot only stop at creating awareness. It has to be followed up with training. People also need to be sensitized to the importance of Personal Protective Equipment as a means of first line of defense. OHS awareness should be started at school level to ensure that the future working population is well aware of the occupational hazards and their rights to a safe work environment. Integration of health and safety in all curriculums is essential and this task should be taken up on priority to ensure a safer working environment. But to do all this we need a large trained force of OH professionals. There is an urgent need to have more professional institutes that can impart the training to create a large pool of OHS professionals. This can be achieved through corporate and governmental initiatives.
So in this article we will emphasis on Safety training as a part of safety management system and to know the awareness amongst shop floor employees working in manufacturing industry.

Cohen (1977);
His study involved examining critical elements that should be part of a successful industrial safety program. According to him, the success of an Industrial Safety Program is best defined by lower injury rates and accidents. He concluded that as far as occupational safety is concerned, strong company commitment to safety, and informal/ formal communication between various levels of a company are the most contributing factors to make a safety program successful.

Zohar (1980);
His focus was on the safety climate of an enterprise. His study concluded that safety climate is related to the general safety level in these organizations and can be regarded as a characteristic of industrial organizations. His study underlines the importance of safety related issues in manufacturing environments.

Col S Rajeev (2000)
Bundelkhand University, Jhansi has studied the safety requirement in industrial sector for the precaution of accidents which occurs commonly and affects human being such as employer and employee. He has analysis that safety measures has positive contribution in development of industry. He concluded that in India most of industries and factory move into production without incorporate without all safety measures and safety arrangement are not keeping pace with the industrial development.

Alli, 2001;
According to his study, worker participation is one of the most essential aspects of the Occupational health safety management system of the organization.

Gupta (2002) J.P.
According to him the Bhopal Gas tragedy happened due to lack of financial problems, reduction in workers amenities, cost cutting procedure and lack of safety management.

Girish Gundesha (2003)
He has analysis the role and responsibilities of employers, union, management and society. He concluded that precautionary measures must be taken to make the work place safer and should provide proper space to the employers to avoid accidents. According to his study accidents has an impact on overall condition of employer as well as employees.

Beriha, G S et al. (2011)
The authors above conducted a study entitled Safety performance evaluation of Indian organizations. The intention of the research was to create an appropriate standard for benchmarking occupational health and safety performance. The major purpose of their study was to evolve strategies to improve the performance and efficiency of the workers. A major finding in the study was that expenses in safety training were relatively more sensitive for improving safety performance of the organization as compared to expenses in health care.

Geri Shanker et al. (2012);
The authors conducted a study entitled "Assessment of occupational health practices in Indian industries" to review the perception of safety officers on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) norms extended to the workers from Indian industries. It is quite evident that the study underlines the importance of the workers knowing about their rights and duties.
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research methodology use for this study is survey method and research design is in descriptive in nature. The selection of industrial employee by simple random sampling and sample size was 180 shop floor employees.
Objective of the Study:  The majority of employees felt that safety is a priority and awareness of factories emergency evacuation plan was good. Most of the employees agreed on training provided by company. Hence they agree to handle emergency situation at work. .Most employees know the location of factories fire extinguisher(s) because, on shop floor, arrangements of fire extinguishers is well in position. On the point regarding knowledge of unsafe conditions, Unsafe Act and safety hazard has to be known according to their opinions. Employees are somewhat aware of safety issues or violations and its effect on their life. Awareness of Occupational Health & safety policy is average. So majority employees felt safe at workplace but satisfaction regarding Personal protective Equipment (PPE) is comparatively not much better than other response. Though concern is shown; for health & safety at work; is an area to be focused and improved upon.

V.
CONCLUSION: OSH knowledge, attitude and skills should be encouraged among employees through proper safety training, when each individual employee will train oneself as well as other employees by sharing knowledge, continuously improving safety management practices, practicing safe activities, safe behavior, then industries can succeed as receiving positive effects on the working environment in terms of quality production, productivity enhancement plus job satisfaction among employees. Employers should use all available resources to learn about their obligations in keeping safe work culture for employee and resolving hazardous situations. REFERENCES: