An Assessment of Small and Medium Enterprise Owners’ Occupational Safety and Health Efforts: The Case of Southerton, Harare, Zimbabwe

Aims: To assess Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) owners’ efforts towards the occupational health and safety scenario of their companies.
Study Design: This study followed a survey approach.
Place and Duration of Study: Southerton industrial area, Harare, Zimbabwe, between March 2013 and June 2013.
Methodology: Questionnaires were used to collect data from 26 managers and owners of SMEs (3 – 49 employees). Hundred and forty (140) questionnaires were administered to employees other than managers from the 26 SMEs. The number of employee participants were stratified from the size of the SMEs. A descriptive analysis of owners’ characteristics, the interventions they have put in place and how employees felt about the management of safety at their work places was done.
Results: Research findings indicate that most SME managers attained tertiary level of education, and have relevant expertise and experience. This makes them capable of having sound occupational safety and health (OSH) management principles. Generally management responses show that SMEs’ safety and health scenario can be characterized as inadequate. It was found that despite 70.8 % of the managers having tertiary education and 38.9% having more than 2 years’ experience still all (100%) SMEs had no safety management system, 92.3% had no safety policy, 96.2% had no hazardous exposure control strategies and 92.3% had no hazard management principles. Furthermore employees indicated that their managers used a reactive approach towards risk (87.5%), attached low priority to OSH against production, lacked commitment (62.9%), and had a blame attitude towards accidents causation (79,3%). Most employee responses indicate dissatisfaction with the OSH scenario at their work places.
Recommendations: It is recommended that SME managers may improve workplace safety and health and consequently improve business performance by implementing basic safety management principles. Secondly, there is need to improve employees involvement in safety matters. Thirdly, managers should seek OSH knowledge and advice through attending workshops or taking courses on OSH management. Training of managers and owners may make concertize them on how compliance to safety may improve productivity, quality and minimize production costs. Furthermore policy makers should develop a cost effective, simple and easy to use regulatory OSH framework for SMEs managers to implement. An SME easily-accessible-database should be developed and frequently updated to allow exchange of information within the sector.