Assessment of the Quality of Job Descriptions of Safety Jobs in the Saudi Companies

The poor occupational safety and health (OSH) performance of many sectors in Saudi Arabia necessitates studying the reasons behind this performance. While other studies addressed many potential reasons, the objective of the current study is to investigate the quality of job descriptions of the safety jobs in Saudi Arabia. A sample of 69 job descriptions for several safety job titles and from different industrial or service sectors were analyzed to discover the important factors that may have an impact. The results revealed that there are some gaps in the design of the sampled job descriptions' components, particularly in the job information and the required qualifications for the jobs. The quality of job descriptions varied from one industrial sector to another, with oil & gas, petrochemicals and utilities sectors being in the top, and manufacturing, education/training, construction, and service/retail/distribution in the bottom in terms of job descriptions quality. There was no clear relationship between the safety job title and the quality of job descriptions. However, the required experience had positive impact on the quality of job descriptions of safety jobs. It is recommended that further studies covering a larger sample size of job descriptions to be conducted to obtain results that can be generalized and utilized in setting proper policies to improve the practices of the Saudi companies in the design of job descriptions of safety jobs and, hence, hiring the appropriate safety professionals.