‘Working Without Occupational Health and Safety Is a Thing of the Past’: The Effectiveness of a Workplace Health and Safety Campaign in Andalusia (Spain)

Abstract

This study focuses on an Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) campaign in Andalusia, Spain, designed to raise awareness of risk prevention in the workplace. The work examines the effectiveness of the campaign, launched by the regional Andalusian government and entitled ‘Working Without Risk Prevention at Work is a Thing of the Past’. The study focuses on how this campaign affected the three components of people’s behavior – that is, cognitive, emotional and conative.

The results indicate that this campaign had very little impact on the Andalusian population. The key issue appears to be poor diffusion of the campaign, rather than the message itself, which seemed to generate the desired effects, particularly at cognitive and affective levels.

It is important that public bodies responsible for health and safety awareness take greater care over such campaigns, above all in terms of achieving public exposure. Only by doing so can they ensure that the message proves effective at achieving the desired impact.

This work is part of a research project with reference number: N°14883 funded by the Regional Ministry of Employment of the Regional Government of Andalusia (Spain).