A systemic perspective to safety behaviour emergence in organizations: Evaluation of a game‐based simulation for improving safety communication behaviour

Abstract

Struck‐by injuries are associated with negative health outcomes and increased costs caused by violent contact with an object, equipment or person; however, safety behaviours such as hazard identification and communication can reduce or eliminate accident occurrences. The current study applied a systemic perspective to analyse safety behaviour emergence within an organization's safety system. An organization's safety system is a purposeful human activity system (PHAS) because people come together to fulfil the purpose of reducing or eliminating accidents. In this study, a commercial kitchen is defined as a PHAS to guide the analysis and promotion of verbal safety communication behaviour. A game‐based simulation intervention was developed and evaluated to support the emergence of verbal safety communication behaviour within a commercial kitchen. Results showed that the game‐based simulation facilitated the emergence of verbal safety communication behaviour, thus validating the systemic approach used in this study.