A LABOR RISK FACTOR IDENTIFICATION MODEL FOR AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS WORKING WITH LMS (LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM) TOOLS

Occupational risk factors are known as all those environmental conditions and working materials that can potentially affect workers health and produce undesirable effects upon sector productivity. In Colombia, it is required a better understanding of these working conditions not only by the employers, but by the employees, because the best way to avoid and to minimize safety and health risks at work is by developing sustainable and comprehensive ways to build cooperative knowledge, to set behavioral measures within the workforce, as the best way to address this issue.

In this sense, it is necessary to develop, test and implement learning mechanisms that allow the identification, prevention and control of these threats, taking as a starting point the economic activity of the organizations; and making the cooperative knowledge building its core foundation.

Thus, the main purpose of this research was to build a learning tool to raise awareness in the rural worker's community, using information and communication technologies (ICT), to help reduce incidents, accidents and occupational diseases in the agricultural sector of the Bogotá Savanna, achieving better compliance with the established regulations, and to strengthen the knowledge involving risk perception, worker's networks of risk awareness and a thriving learning community to set an example to all those organizations willing to apply such methods in their rural organizations, which are one of the most disadvantaged areas in Colombia in regard of safety and health, and in the becoming scenario of post-conflict made after the peace agreements between the national government and the guerrillas, in a long-lasting war of almost 60 years.

To that end, an initial diagnosis of the occupational risk factors will be carried out according to its specific field, by means of applying interviews, observation and some planned inspections, reviewing occupational medical exams; and the developing of an occupational risk matrix in 5 work places that fulfill different functions in the same process, all for agro industrial organizations located in the Bogota savannah.

Taking into account the information obtained, a tool based on E-learning is designed. This tool was implemented in the 5 selected companies to validate its effectiveness and coherence in obtaining and analyzing the information collected, the data obtained will be compared with the initial information and an analysis of expected results will be carried out. Once this is obtained, the tool will be evaluated through an experimental design with a control group and an analysis of the main risk factors will be carried out to generate a strategy that minimizes the labor risks identified in the company’s object of study.