Correlation Approach in Defining Organizational Health and Safety Management Strategies

Purpose: The research aimed to verify the applicability of the SWOT / TOWS method to the selection of organizational health and safety management strategies in manufacturing companies, with a focus on the correlation approach in the conducted research. Design/Methodology/Approach: Determining a strategy in the field of health and safety management in nine production companies. The methodology of selecting a strategy was based on SWOT/TOWS methodology assumption. The input data for the research was: characteristics of the company's operations, description of the context of the company's operation, requirements of interested parties along with their criticality based on the prepared hierarchy of occupational health and safety(OHS) requirements. Findings: The use of the correlation approach in determining the OHS management strategy allowed for estimating the strength of the impact of individual factors on the selection of OHS management strategies in a manufacturing company, identification of interactions between factors in 8 crosstables, and above all, determination of OHS management strategies, i.e. for 7 companies of the strategy aggressive, for the others it is conservative and defensive. Practical Implications: Establishing a health and safety management strategy should be considered particularly important in the context of the challenges faced by enterprises resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the conducted research, it can be concluded that the SWOT / TOWS method enables the determination of an occupational health and safety management strategy. Originality / Value: In the SWOT / TOWS method, attention should be paid to the dominant number of interactions and to the distribution of the weighted number of interactions. The article shows that there are correlations for which it is necessary to indicate an action strategy to a specific combination of factors, especially when the product of weights and the number of interactions indicates the priority of a strategy other than that adopted for the entire enterprise.