EVALUATION OF SAFETY CULTURE MATURITY LEVELS OF THE UNIVERSITIES IN KENYA

Abstract

Safety culture is shared and accepted attitudes, beliefs and practices supported by documented policies and procedures in an organization which influences employees’ perceptions and behaviors within a workplace. Consequently, analysis of safety culture is vital in institutions in order to identify potential areas of improvement. The objective of this study was to evaluate safety culture maturity levels in universities in Kenya. Data was collected from seven universities where descriptive research design was utilized using simple and stratified random sampling methods. The tools used for data collection included questionnaires, observations and interviews. Similarly, secondary data was collected from universities strategic plans, policies and statutes. The data was subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS 16.0 and excel statistical packages. The results showed that six universities were in the emerging level (level 1) and one was in the managing level (level 2). The sampled universities recorded low average satisfaction levels ranging from 17.2% to 34.8%. The employees’ perceptions were varied. The means of the key dimensions ranged from 1.90 to 3.68 with the average mean scores ranging from 2.42 to 3.49. Low safety perception on safety management in the universities was established. This was found to be as a result of the identified gaps in safety management systems which included invisible and weak top management commitment, unclear communication procedures, lack of adequate safety training and non-existence of safety rewarding systems. Based on these results, the study recommends an improvement on the identified weak safety management by the universities’ management thus improving the employees’ safety perception and satisfaction leading to an enhancement of safety culture maturity level. The role of universities top management and leadership in safety culture development in the universities in Kenya should be researched on to identify the weaknesses hampering their poor response.