THE ROLE OF HEALTH AND SAFETY COMMITTEES IN INFLUENCING EMPLOYEES’ WELL-BEING AND WORK ACCIDENTS. AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Abstract

The presence of a health and safety committee in an
organization was associated with higher employees’
well-being in the literature, but the mechanisms
underlying this possible link are little explored. Our
theoretical framework is based on the “production
politics” perspective of Burawoy (1985). Our analyses
mobilize a mixed methods research design. From
SUMER 2003 and 2010 national surveys which
respectively include 24 486 employees and 47 982
employees, we examine the effects of health and
safety committees (CHSCT in French) on well-being
and on work accidents and also test the mediating
effect of the implementation of occupational risk
prevention policies. All things being equal, the
presence of a health and safety committee is significantly associated with lower length of absences for
work accident via the implementation of an occupational risk prevention policy. However, the results
demonstrate that the presence of a health and safety
committee is associated with a lower likelihood of
being satisfied by the job and a higher frequency of
work accidents. A qualitative study trough a direct
observation completes these analyses by showing the
importance of the knowledge activism (Hall et al.,
2006) of health and safety committees’ members. We
discuss these results and their managerial implications.