Safety climate and compliance in the Norwegian aquaculture industry—employees’ perceptions at different company levels

Abstract

The aquaculture industry is economically important in Norway, and the production is expected to increase in the future. Employees at the fish farms face a high risk of accidents compared to employees in other industries and the focus on safety from both industry and researchers has increased during the last decade. Adding to the knowledge on safety in aquaculture, the objective of this paper is to study employees’ perception of safety climate, and whether aspects related to safety climate may predict employees’ compliance. Findings from two surveys aimed at managers and employees in different companies are analysed. The first is a telephone survey targeting employees and managers at the fish farms. The second is a web-based survey involving the onshore management level. The results show that employees at all levels have a positive perception of the safety climate, but they also illustrate challenges related to work pressure, maintenance and employee participation. Furthermore, the analysis shows that work pressure affects compliance negatively while participation and competence have positive associations with compliance. These results give input to some practical measures for safety management in the industry. Holen et al., 2017a). The fish farm also has a feeding barge for equipment and feed storage, the feeding system, as well as manager offices, meeting rooms and accommodation for shift workers. Fish farmers are decreed to perform daily inspections to assess fish welfare and document that the net cages are in order. Fish farmers often use boats and cranes in their work, but increasingly rely on specialized service vessel crews to perform tasks such as mooring operations and delousing. The safety for fish, material assets and personnel is regulated by an extensive set of statutory requirements (Holmen et al., 2017b), which are audited by five different regulatory authorities (Holmen et al., 2017c). The aquaculture production has the potential to increase in the future (Olafsen et al., 2012). Technology innovations aim to enable production at areas more exposed with respect to climate, wind and currents. This raises new challenges when it comes to fish welfare and operational safety (Bjelland et al., 2015). The attention to occupational and operational safety in the aquaculture industry has increased during the last decade. Recent studies indicate that safety and risk management systems need to