Study of the Impact of the Shingo Model and the EFQM Model on Occupational Safety in Portuguese Organizations

In the competitive world we are facing, organizations strive to achieve excellence. To this end, organizations must also ensure the safety, health and well-being of their employees. The EFQM and the Shingo models are globally recognized excellence models that help organizations to enhance their performance. In view of the above, the need arose to study the impact of occupational safety on Portuguese companies, according to the guidelines of these models. To this purpose, a survey was designed. After a statistical analysis of the 138 valid results, the findings reinforce the complexity and diversity of perspectives on business and operational excellence in the field of safety among organizations and allow us to verify that the models have a positive impact on the safety of companies since their guidelines are generally considered to be very important for the vast majority of respondents and for the organizations they represent. Results also show that there is room for improvement in certain key aspects of the models in relation to occupational safety, especially in predisposition to innovation, continuous improvement, organizational culture, and self-assessment. Additionally, the study reveals that the importance given by companies to different aspects related to safety culture differs between departments of organizations and that there is a lack of significant relationship between the implementation of the EFQM model and Lean tools. This investigation contributes to understanding the relevance of this excellence models in the Portuguese context and identifies areas for improvement, offering valuable insights for both academia and industry professionals.