Safety Training Effectiveness: A Research Agenda

Dear Colleagues,

The International Labour Organization estimates over 6000 occupational fatalities per day around the world, corresponding to 2.3 million worker victims of work-related accidents or diseases every year. Overall, occupational accidents affect 160 million workers annually worldwide. To contribute to the improvement of interventions to ensure safety at work, Beus et al. (2016) proposed an integrated model of workplace safety, connecting different theoretical propositions in a multilevel perspective. This helps to identify antecedents of adverse events at both the individual and group/organization levels, distinguishing between distal (e.g., individual differences, contextual factors) and proximal factors (e.g., safety knowledge, skills, or motivation).

Safety training is considered an example of contextual factors, as safety leadership, safety norms, and safety climate. In this regard, Burke et al. (2011) show that safety training leads to a significant improvement in safety knowledge and behavior, in particular through the use of more engaging methods. Additionally, several studies suggest that safety outcomes can be influenced at both the individual and group level by contextual factors such as safety training.

As James Reason states, if we are not able to change the human condition, it is about changing the conditions in which people work, favoring the identification of errors and the recognition of their characteristics, to be able to manage them effectively. In this sense, safety training can make a relevant contribution.

Unfortunately, we still know too little about the characteristics of the safety training that is provided, and even less about the quality of this training and its effectiveness. Recent meta-analytical studies (Robson et al., 2012; Ricci et al., 2016) have made it possible to classify training outcomes on different levels (knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, health outcomes) and to identify valid measures and methods to detect safety training effectiveness. However, also due to a limited number of good quality primary studies, it is still not possible to clearly define which factors determine the effectiveness of safety training.

This Special Issue is aimed at publishing studies that, through the collection of original data (quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods), as well as systematic reviews, meta-analyses, case studies and theoretical papers, make it possible to clarify the future directions of research in safety training. Namely, some core issues will be: how to measure the effectiveness of safety training at work; the effects of efficacy on one or more levels, detected through empirical studies (cross-sectional, longitudinal, randomized, controlled); and the definition of what is meant by more or less engaging training methods. Special attention will also be given to the presentation of interdisciplinary work and multinational collaborative research. In addition, methodological contributions about the investigation of the factors contributing to safety training effectiveness are welcome.

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• safety
• health
• training effectiveness
• training methods
• evaluation
• prevention
• workplace training
• occupational safety and health
• safe behavior
• safety performance