The paper reports on a study conducted in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in NCER, Malaysia. Four safety management practices were studied in relation to safety behaviour of employees. Respondents consisted of employees working in SMEs in NCER. Companies were sampled randomly from directories provided by SMECorp and other SME-related body. Self-administered questionnaires were sent by mail to employees working in SMEs. Completed questionnaires were mailed back by respondents using pre-addressed and post-paid envelope included. Correlation analysis were conducted and found that all four safety management practices are highly correlated with safety behaviour. The result provides support to the use of safety management practices to improve safety behaviour of employees and overall safety of the workplace. Suggestions for management in SMEs are presented in the discussion section. Management in SMEs can consider the use of safety management practices as antecedents that trigger safety behaviour of their employees in order to reduce accident rate in workplace.
Workplace accident is still prevalent in the Malaysian industry sector. Although statistics indicates that the number of
accidents in the workplace is showing signs of decrease over the last five years, there is still room for improvements. According to
report, a majority of the workplace accidents in Malaysia happened in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). This shows that SME is
still lagging behind in ensuring the safety of their workplace. This can disrupt their business activities as workplace accidents bring
several negative effects. Therefore, this study explores the use of safety training to foster safety behaviour among employees. Surveys
were distributed to employees working in SME, Northern Corridor of Economic Region (NCER). The data was analysed and results
were presented. Suggestions to management in SME are made at the end of the paper.