An investigation into the effects of a health and training intervention on the safety climate of an organisation

In the early hours of the morning of Saturday, 14th February 1981, a disastrous fire swept through an Irish discotheque called ‘The Stardust’ in the north Dublin suburb of Artane. Forty-eight people were killed and one hundred and twenty eight were seriously injured. This event is the catalyst for this investigation. The purpose of this investigation is to ascertain if training positively affects safety attitude of nightclub staff, through the adaptation of a safety management system from the airline industry, in a high volume nightclub in the west of Ireland. This is a qualitative investigation into the safety attitude in a high volume Irish nightclub organisation. The effects of a training intervention on the safety climate are examined via a longitudinal quasi-experimental investigation by issuing a pre and post-training 57-item questionnaire. The research was conducted in three distinct phases. In the first phase a pre-training 57 item questionnaire was distributed to virtually all employees. The second phase involved dividing the workforce into an Experimental Group, which received training, and a Control Group, which did not receive training. Phase three involved the re-issuance of the safety attitude post training questionnaire, which was then analysed, to ascertain if there had been an improvement in attitude amongst any of the employees. The aviation industry’s ‘management safety concept’ of Crew Resource Management (CRM) was successfully adopted and adapted, with regular training sessions given to the Experimental Group. Analysis of the questionnaires comprehensively shows that safety training has a definite positive influence on safety attitude and that the principles of CRM can be successfully transferred from the airline industry to the nightclub industry.