Development Of Safety Management System In Malaysia Hospitality Industry

Key attributes of safety management system

Discuss About The Development Of The Safety Management System.

Safety management is defined as the process or measures taken by organization to detect safety risk and hazards in workplace and take adequate steps to mitigate risk or reduce exposure to risk or hazards (Amyotte & Lupien, 2017). The key attributes of a safety management system is to identify safety hazards, take remedial steps to maintain safety, conduct regular assessment of safety performance and assess its impact on overall performance (Reinhold, Tint, & Paas, 2016). Safety management is an important priority in different work sectors due to its impact on employee’s performance, productivity and overall profitability of an organization. However, safety management becomes a challenging task for organization because of environmental turbulence in the global marketing and its impact on operations of an organization (Surienty, 2012). Focusing on the safety of employees is essential to achieve organization goals, however current challenges that has increased challenge for hospitality industry in safety management is the rise in injuries and other health and safety risk recently. It has magnified the level of hazard or safety issue that an employee can face in work.

The hospitality industry in Malaysia continue to face challenge because of high workplace accident rates and rise in incidents of health and food safety issues in hospitality industry (Norizawati & Tarmiji, 2014). Other research evidence suggested that hazardous incidence in workplace can be reduced if employees and employers are more sensitive to good safety behavior and safety management practices. Effective implementation of safety management practices is also beneficial to support employees in adapting good safety behavior and promoting work performance (Robertson, Jansen Birch, & Cooper, 2012). A suitable and safe work environment influences employee’s attitude towards work and desire to perform. Hence, the level of safety management can influence involvement or non-involvement of employee’s in he production activities at workplace. As the hospitality industry of Malaysia is growing, it is necessary to evaluate safety management practices in Malaysia and its impact on work performance. The main purpose of systematic review is to evaluate research literature on the effect of safety management on Job performance in Malaysia in the hospitality sector and we also seek to find out the extent to which hospitality industry of Malaysia is ready to provide suitable and effective workplace environment to workers.  

• To analyze how safety management practices affect job performance in the hospitality industry
• To evaluate safety management practices in hospitality sector of Malaysia
• To determine the impact of safety management on job performance in employees working in hospitality sector in Malaysia

The systematic review process was guided by PRISMA checklist which is an evidence based framework to accurately report systematic reviews. The PRISMA checklist helped in the formulation of review protocol, search strategy, risk assessment and quality appraisal and data extraction process. The final list of articles obtained after applying search strategy has been provided in the form of PRISMA flow diagram.

Challenges faced by safety management in hospitality industry

To get relevant and recent peer-reviewed research articles related to the research topic, extensive search was done from ACU library data base. The search process was refined by the use of filters for dates, resource type and subject. The date for literature search was set between 2010 and 2018.  The main rational for this was to get updated information on safety management practices in hospitality industry of Malaysia. In addition, from the list of different resource types, only journal articles were taken and other source like newspaper, online websites and reports were excluded.  In addition, the search strategy for retrieving relevant articles was to use specific key terms related to the topic. The search process was limited to retrieving articles published in a peer-reviewed journal article. The key terms used for literature search included ‘Safety management practices’, ‘Safety management practices in hospital industry of Malaysia’ and ‘effect of safety management on job performance in Malaysia’.

As per the guidelines for the conducting systematic review, certain inclusion and exclusion criteria was also defined for systematic review. The key inclusion and exclusion criteria for the literature review were as follows:

• Type of publication: Only peer-reviewed research articles published within 2010-2018 were included in the review.
• Research question: Another inclusion criteria was that all research articles must clearly defined objective similar to the effectiveness of safety management and in the context of practices in Malaysia.
• Population: The main population of interest in all studies should be workers in hospitality industry or staffs of hospitality industry in Malaysia.
• Type of evidence: Only primary research articles and literature review related studies were taken for the review.
• Intervention: The interventions implemented in selected research articles must be within the context of safety management practices.
• Language: Only those articles were taken which were published in English language.

The internal validity and quality of each research articles were judged by considering research rigor, potential source of bias and confounders. The studies were also evaluated according to level of evidence criteria. These two strategies were useful in extensively analyzing methodological approach and scientific rigor in studies.

For each study, data were extracted related to year of publication, industry, country, intervention, comparison group, independent variables and dependent variables. This process helped in selection and categorization of research evidence according to the research question and objective of the study.

By the assessment of research articles on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 20 articles were screened for eligibility. The initial search was done by use of key terms and a total 80 articles were retrieved. However, after assessment for duplicates, only 50 articles were included for further analysis. Finally, the review of research articles on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in inclusion of 20 articles for review. Out of this, 8 full-text articles were excluded as it did not have links with hospitality industry after reading the full-text of the article. On the whole, 10 low to moderate quality research articles were included for systematic review and analysis. The research designs for the studies mainly included longitudinal study, randomized controlled trial and cross-sectional interview method. The summary of included studies and risk of bias assessment has been provided in Table 1 and Table 2.

Impact of safety management on employee performance

The quality of selected research articles were judged by identifying limitations in study design, present confounding factors, potential for bias, hierarchy of evidence, generalisability of findings and research rigor. Out of 10 research articles, five articles were high quality paper and others were found to be of low to moderate quality because of methodological limitation. All research studies were done in Malaysia and two of them gave idea about safety management practices by evaluating perception of culinary workers and managers respectively. Two articles explored relation between work condition and job performance and another article gave insight into employee’s perception toward safety management practices. Other five articles specifically covered details about important elements that promotes safety management practices and affect job performance in hospitality industry.

After the review of research articles, three main themes emerged regarding the impact of safety management on job performance in hospitality industry. These themes were generated by coding key statements or common ideas from selected research articles. This process of coding helped in identifying three major themes of safety management practices in hospitality industry of Malaysia and impact of safety management on job performance in Malaysia. These themes included the following:

Safety management practices across hospitality industry in Malaysia influenced by nature of hotels, consumer awareness and Malaysian food safety system

A qualitative research study is considered relevant to the study objective as it investigated about the impact of food hygiene and safety on culinary staffs. By conducting semi-structured interview with five culinary art students, the participant’s response related to food safety and hygiene practice during industry internship was analyzed. Although all participants gave positive feedback on food and safety practice in hotel restaurant, however one negative attributes found in informants was that they regarded the role of hotels as important to ensure optimal safety for consumers and employees. The study also revealed differences in the type of safety management practices implemented according to type of hotels (Jeinie, Sharif, Saad, & Nor, 2016). The study is of moderate quality. Several important methodological considerations were missing in the study. However, the study gave an important insight that to improve job performance; safety training and education should be given to staffs considering the type of hotel where they will be recruired. Another researcher supports the fact that with dynamic changes in industry, human resource (HR) development practices and characteristics of employment changes (Chan, 2015).

A quantitative research articles was also retrieved that specifically gave indication about characteristics of food companies, their food safety activities and factors influencing their decision to implement Malaysian food safety system. This research is suitable as SMEs can benefit by adapting food processing and safety plan to ensure business sustainability and maximize adaptability to business challenges. The main population of interest for the cross-sectional study included staffs from managerial position like quality manager, company owner and production manager. About 55.1 were classified as early adapters in the food safety system and the majority of participant had the intention to lower risk of food safety. The most important finding was that customer awareness affected food safety system adoption. The respondents also favored giving training to staffs to improve safety in hotel industries (Fernando & Yusoff, 2014). Hence, it gave the indication that Malaysian food safety system has improved safety management practices at hotel. This is a high quality study in terms of detail, in-depth analysis and study design. The findings of the study may have useful implication in deciding types of education and training needed to increase confidence of employees, reduce hazards and improve job performance.

Systematic review of the effect of safety management on job performance in Malaysian hospitality sector

Low priority towards safety management practices in Malaysia and it negatively impact on job performance.

There were three research articles that discussed about employee’s perception on safety management practices in Malaysia and its impact on performance of employees in Malaysia. One of the studies was a quantitative descriptive study that aimed to investigate about priority towards safety management practices in Malaysia and its relationship to safety performance. The population for the study included study maintenance contractor working within Klang Valley, Malaysia. The study had appropriate sample size and outcome measures were evaluated by means of statistical tools. The study showed wide variations in employee’s priority towards safety management practices. Overall analysis revealed that facilities maintenance company in Malaysia have low priority towards safety management practices (Jaafar, 2017).  The number of hazardous incident is likely to be high if an employee gives low priority to safety. Another research also supported the view that employee’s perception towards safety plays an important role in creating safe workplace (McFadden, Murphy, Robertson, Cheung, & Zohar, 2016). However, the perception related to safety management as a priority is also dependent on safety training, management commitment and safety promotion policies and protocols in hospitality industry.

Other two studies were longitudinal studies which explored relationship between work condition and job performance by means of a longitudinal study and cross-sectional interview method respectively. The first used quantitative approach to show that majority of employees experience stress in the job and link between emotional intelligence and job performance was found. It gives the implication that apart from safety management training, positive attitudinal and behavioral outcome is also important to improve job performance (Ismail, Suh-Suh, Ajis, & Dollah, 2009). The research is of high quality as all important steps were considered by the researcher to reduce bias and enhance the quality of the data. The second research article was a multilevel longitudinal study that investigated about safety culture and psychosocial safety climate on performance outcome of employees. The research done in private sector organization concluded that psychosocial hazards are also present that increase safety risk for employees. This leads to emotional exhaustion and depression in employees (Idris & Dollard, 2014). It gives the implication to managers to consider psychological health of employees to support workers and create better work conditions.

The analysis of above five articles gave the indication regarding training as mportant factor in improving job performance in Malaysian hotel industry. Another study gave indication of reward system as an important factor to improve performance of employees. Although safety training affects employee’s confidence and performance in the job, however reward system affects overall job satisfaction level. The research investigated the relationship between job satisfaction and reward management among frontline employees in hotel industry in Malaysia. The quantitative analysis of interview response revealed that reward is a potential source of employee motivation and job satisfaction (Bustamam, Teng, & Abdullah, 2014). The study was consistent with other evidence as it showed positive relation between job satisfaction and rewards. This is relevant to the concept of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herberg’s motivation theories as performance of employees increased when they found their job to be meaningful (Terera & Ngirande, 2014). Hence, apart from resource efficiency, safety management system, rewards are also essential to achieve high employee performance.

Another research gave the indication that proactive occupational safety and health management is crucial for good health as well as good business. The study investigated about the impact of occupational health and safety management on organization performance, employee attitude and health and well-being. The cross-sectional survey with employees revealed that perception of positive safety climate was associated with good employee attitude and well-being. The quantitative analysis showed that organizations which have proactive health and safety management had high profit margins, more positive safety climate perception and improved employee organizational commitment (Haslam, O’Hara, Kazi, Twumasi, & Haslam, 2016). Hence, more number of such hotels is also needed in Malaysia to promote employees performance and overall productivity.  

It can be deduced from the aforementioned articles that an increase has been observed in the number of cases in relation to the hospitality industry that encompass breach of the food and safety. This increased risk of breach highlights the need of a greater emphasis on the compliance within the hospitality industry. The evidences cited above illustrate the role of hotels in maintain optimal safety of the health of all employees and the consumers. An analysis of the articles provide evidence for the fact that a breach in health and safety in the hospitality industry can lead to several tragic consequences for the consumers and the staff, which I  turn puts the reputation of the hotel at stake. Hence, there is a need to safeguard the hotel’s reputation and commercial success against all forms of prosecution by being proactive and ensuring implementation of a robust risk management strategy. The articles cited above were able to illustrate the role of the hotels in showing adherence to appropriate standards that maintain food safety (Jeinie, Sharif, Saad, & Nor, 2016). Regardless of the type of hotel and the range of its consumers, all hotel food safety regulations must be accurately followed, with the aim of ensuring that the food is prepared in safe conditions by the employees, for all customers. This calls for the need to practice intense food safety procedures that will form an integral part of training programs that encompass food safety regulations (Nik Husain, Wan Muda, Noor Jamil, Nik Hanafi, & Abdul Rahman, 2016). The fact that significant improvement has been observed in the Malaysian food safety system can be attributed to the fact that customer awareness on food safety and food handling practices is a major public concern (Woh, Thong, Behnke, Lewis, & Zain, 2016).

An increase in the perception of all consumers regarding the food safety practices that are followed in the hospitality industry and the food companies directly influence the adoption of approaches that emphasize on safe food preparation. The articles also help in identifying the needs of essential training and education, with an evolution of the public health and safety standards (Fernando & Yusoff, 2014). These training programs help all key stakeholders of the hospitality and food industry become aware of the necessary skills and certifications that must be acquired to meet the high standards of food industry in Malaysia. The articles also provided exhaustive information on the safety management practices in Malaysia, which encompass strategies, policies or procedures that are followed by the Malaysian companies with the aim of targeting safety of all employees. The articles suggest that appropriate implementation of safety management practices are not only able to improve the overall working conditions but also positively influences the attitude and perceptions of all employees with regards to maintenance of safety standards. This directly leads to a reduction in hazards or accidents at the workplace (Rahim, Ng, Biggs, & Boots, 2014). Low rates of compliance to the legislation and regulation of safety management in Malaysian companies can be considered as a direct contributor to increased likelihood of hazardous incidents in Malaysia (Jaafar, 2017). Furthermore, it can be deduced from the articles that positive employee perception creates significant impacts on reducing workplace hazards and injuries. Hence, the commitment of the management of all Malaysian companies is an essential factor that influences employee perception of the safety management system.

Conclusion:

The main purpose of systematic review was to analyze safety management practice in hotel sector of Malaysia and assess the impact of safety management practices on job performance. By the use of specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 10 articles were found to fulfill the study objective. Two studies used qualitative approach to shed light on the topic and other eight were quantitative research article. The research study was analyzed on the two broad themes of safety management practices in Malaysia and impact of safety management practices on job performance in Malaysia. From the analysis of research articles under first theme, it can be concluded that safety management practices vary in Malaysia according to nature of hotel and type of services. The systematic review of research literatures gave the implication that safety training should be an important part of professional internship so that employees develop the right skills to work as per service requirement of different categories of hotels in Malaysia.  In addition, the studies established clear link between safety management perception and employees performance.

On the whole, it is evident that training is crucial to employee’s job performance and satisfaction with the job in hotel industry of Malaysia. As hotel industry in Malaysia is proliferating it is recommended that the managers take the following steps to promote safety culture and job performance in hospitality sectors:

• Systematic and comprehensive safety training should be provided to employees to prevent accidents, improve safety performance and make employees competent in identifying potential hazards.
• Management commitment and leadership is critical to the success of safety program in hospitality industry and such initiatives drive active participation of employee’s in organization.
• Safety communication and feedback is crucial to enhance mutual understanding between employer and employee towards organizations safety requirement and objective(KH Hon, Hinze, & PC Chan, 2014)

References

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Bustamam, F. L., Teng, S. S., & Abdullah, F. Z. (2014). Reward management and job satisfaction among frontline employees in hotel industry in Malaysia. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 144, 392-402.

Chan, J. K. (2015). Multi Methods Contribution in Researching Tourism Human Resource Management Practices in Malaysia. . Academic Conferences Limited., 120.

Fernando, Y. N., & Yusoff, Y. (2014). Activities, motives and external factors influencing food safety management system adoption in Malaysia. Food Control, 69-75.

Haslam, C., O’Hara, J., Kazi, A., Twumasi, R., & Haslam, R. (2016). Proactive occupational safety and health management: Promoting good health and good business.. Safety science, 99-108.

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McFadden, A. C., Murphy, L. A., Robertson, M. M., Cheung, J. H., & Zohar. (2016). Beyond safety outcomes: An investigation of the impact of safety climate on job satisfaction, employee engagement and turnover using social exchange theory as the theoretical framework. Applied ergonomics, 55, 248-257.

Nik Husain, N. R., Wan Muda, W. M., Noor Jamil, N. I., Nik Hanafi, N. N., & Abdul Rahman, R. (2016). Effect of food safety training on food handlers’ knowledge and practices: A randomized controlled trial. British Food Journal, 118(4), 795-808.

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Robertson, I. T., Jansen Birch, A., & Cooper, C. L. (2012). Job and work attitudes, engagement and employee performance: Where does psychological well-being fit in?. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 33(3)( 224-232).

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Woh, P. Y., Thong, K. L., Behnke, J. M., Lewis, J. W., & Zain, S. N. (2016). Evaluation of basic knowledge on food safety and food handling practices amongst migrant food handlers in Peninsular Malaysia. Food Control, 70, 64-73.

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