Iranian Journal of Ergonomics

Introduction: Studies have shown that one of the factors affecting occupational injuries is employees’ awareness of work situation. Therefore, it is important to identify factors affecting situational awareness. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of fatigue and cognitive failures in predicting work situation awareness among employees.

Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study with a descriptive-correlational design. The sample consisted of 154 employees of the Tehran Pars Khodro Company in 2015, who was selected by stratified random sampling method and responded to questionnaires of fatigue from Chalder et al. (1993), cognitive failures from Broadbent et al. (1982) and work situation awareness of Sneddon et al. (2006). Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and stepwise regression analysis.

Results: The results showed that there were significant relationships between fatigue, cognitive failures and work situation awareness (P < 0.01). Also, fatigue and cognitive failures predicted almost 14% and 25% of the variance of work situation awareness among employees, respectively (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: The reduction of employees’ cognitive and emotional capacity could reduce their awareness of work situation.