Importance of work health and safety training in preventing work injuries: An application in Turkish retail sector

Early years of industrialisation witnessed priorities of producing more, earning more and producing in required quality and quantity demanded by the markets; yet existence of human as a production factor was neglected. However, in today's highly competitive global environment, firms have to take some actions about their human resources that range from improving their work conditions to protecting their health, providing them with work safety and organizing training schemes on these issues in order to survive and catch up with fast changing business settings. The key factor in increasing the productivity of labor force as one of the most important competition components of firms is to provide employees with a workplace of healthy and safe environment. Moreover, elimination of risk factors (physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic) to minimum levels, providing a healthy, safe and humanitarian environment and taking measures for this purpose are requirements to establish workplace peace. It is possible to minimize these risk factors that threaten health and safety of workers by taking technical measures in the workplace. However, technically safe workplaces do not solve the problem fully as workers are required to behave according to the measures taken. This constitutes the priority for working healthy and safe and the study discusses the importance of training in preventing work injuries and occupational diseases.