Managing occupational health and safety in the mining industry

The mining industry is a high health risk occupation. Companies should implement occupational health and safety management (OHSM) rules and regulations. These companies face a rapidly booming mining sector and need the help of OHSM to achieve business goals. Being aware of the influential factors on the OHSM is needed to reduce work-related fatalities and increase the company's efficiency. Few studies identifying the influential factors on the implementation of OHSM in the mining industry are available. This study provides a general overview of OHSM and investigates the relationship between five factors influencing the implementation of occupational health and safety management among currently operational mining companies. The results show that the correlation of the five domains varies. Using factor loading to examine the most influential factor to the least influential factors, the order is shown as follows: act and regulation, stakeholder pressure, investment, integrated OHSM and organizational culture. In addition, lack of adequate investment from the government was reported by the majority of the OHS specialists. This finding is noteworthy in that there was an OHS specialist agreement that their companies do not spend at least 1% of their production and service cost to implement OHSM requirements.