The Study of Correlation between Safety Attitudes and Occupational Stress among Telecom Tower Climbers

Working at telecommunication towers is considered as one of the dangerous occupations which involve terrible accidents such as falling. The attitudes of climber's safety and occupational stress level could have extensive effects on company safety performance. This study has been conducted to study the correlation between safety attitude and occupational stress.
This cross-sectional analytical-descriptive study was conducted among tower climbers as a branch of the telecom company in 2016. 60 out 93 climbers participated voluntarily in this study. The demographics and safety attitude was collected through HSE Indicator and work-related stress questioners. Statistical tests such as χ^2, one way ANOVA, t-test, independent analysis of variation, linear regression were applied. SPSS 21.0 were used for the analysis of the data.
53.7 % of tower climbers had a negative safety attitude. There was a statistically significant correlation between occupation, age, education, work experience and regular exercise workout with the mean score of safety attitude (p>0.05). There was also a statistically significant correlation between qualitative levels of job stress and qualitative levels of safety attitude (p=0.03, =3.407, df=2). The worker's job performance (as a variable of occupational stress) was statistically significantly correlated to their safety attitude (p The tower climbers in telecommunication installation are involved with hazardous operations and they suffer from stress due to their occupation and organizational dissatisfaction, which have a negative effect on their work attitude.The ambiguities in their job descriptions and existing company problems are the most prominent reasons for the climber's low attitude toward the safety matters.