Components of an Occupational Safety and Health Communication Research Strategy for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Abstract

The majority of the global labor force works in firms with fewer than 50 employees; firms with fewer than 250 employees make up 99% of workplaces. Even so, the lack of extensive or comprehensive research has failed to focus on occupational safety and health communication to these small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Given that the magnitude of all occupational safety and health (OSH) morbidity, mortality, and injury disproportionately occurs in businesses with fewer than 250 employees, efforts to communicate with employers to engage in preventative occupational safety and health efforts merit attention. This article provides an overview of important components that should be considered in developing an occupational safety and health (OSH) communication research strategy targeting SMEs. Such a strategy should raise awareness about the diversity and complexity of SMEs and the challenges of targeting OSH communication toward this diverse group. Companies of differing sizes (e.g. 5, 50, 500 employees) likely require differing communication approaches. Communication strategies will benefit from deconstructing the term 'small business' into smaller, more homogenous categories that might require approaches. Theory-based research assessing barriers, message content, channels, reach, reception, motivation, and intention to act serve as the foundation for developing a comprehensive research framework. Attention to this type of research by investigators is warranted and should be encouraged and supported. There would also be value in developing national and international strategies for research on communication with small businesses.

Perception of non-financial risk determinants in SMEs in Visegrad countries

“…Companies of different sizes require different communication approaches regarding security risks. Furthermore, SME owners and workers lack resources in terms of attention and time to address health and safety issues and tend to respond to prompt needs (Schulte et al, 2018).…”

“…SMEs are confronted with various types of risks which can be unknown for big companies or perceived as unimportant. In addition to financial risks (Kljucnikov & Sobekova Majkova, 2018;Kozubíková et al, 2015), there are a large number of non-financial risks such as reputation risk (Kayes et al, 2007), legal risk (Dvorský et al, 2019;Petkovic et al, 2016), innovation risk (Ballinger et al, 2011), safety risk (Schulte et al, 2018), personnel risk (Battisti & Vallanti, 2013), and many others. These non-financial risks are not analyzed as often as financial risks because entrepreneurs generally do not perceive their direct impact.…”

Conference Summary Understanding Small Enterprises Conference, 25–27 October 2017

“…Four papers focus on OS&H approaches for specific industries, the first being auto body collision and machine tool technology education (Bejan et al, 2018) and the others focused on the construction industry (Ringen et al, 2018; Cunningham et al, 2018; Marín and Roelofs, 2018). The focus of the work by Bejan and colleagues was to document how OS&H is taught and assessed over the course of a two-year vocational college program in auto body collision.…”

“…Cunningham and colleagues, building upon the high risk nature of the construction industry, describe their efforts to understand how owners and managers from small construction businesses talk about safety. They examine the correspondence of employers’ self-rated readiness for improvement with the ultimate goal of implementing new or improved OS&H practices (Cunningham et al, 2018). Marín and Roelofs focus on OS&H in small construction enterprises, describing a community-based participatory approach to recruiting participants into research to increase stakeholder involvement and ultimately worker health (Marín and Roelofs, 2018).…”

“…The authors posit that SMEs are a diverse group and many challenges exist for targeting OS&H communications. A first step is to divide small businesses into smaller, more homogeneous categories that will benefit from targeted communication strategies (Schulte, et al, 2018).…”