Academic literature on the topic 'Co-workers' Safety Climate'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use a longitudinal approach to measure safety climate at construction projects, and explore the relationship between safety climate and the level of project completion in the dynamic construction project environments. Design/methodology/approach Multi-wave safety climate surveys were conducted at four processing plant construction projects in New Zealand. Safety climate was measured with a multi-level measurement instrument, which measured construction workers’ perceptions of client’s organisational safety response (COSR), principal contractor’s organisational safety response (PCOSR), supervisors’ safety response (SSR) and co-workers’ safety response (CWSR). Findings At the organisational level, the research identifies a general downward change trend in workers’ perceptions of COSR and PCOSR. At the group level, no clear or consistent change trend is identified between the level of project completion and workers’ perceptions of SSR and CWSR. Research limitations/implications The research suggests that the construction project management should consistently emphasise the importance of safety, even when they are facing production pressure. The research highlights the opportunity to examine the role of supervisors’ leadership as an antecedent to the group-level safety climate and the development of workers’ safety concerns for their co-workers over time. Originality/value This research provides the starting point for understanding safety climate in the dynamic and constantly changing construction project environments, in which the relative priorities change, adverse events arise and production pressures fluctuate over time.

The aim of this pilot study is to adjust the NOSACQ-50 to the work environment of military organizations. NOSACQ-50 is a validated tool successfully used in several organizational domains to measure occupational safety climate (OSC). In general, few studies have been published investigating OSC in military organizations. NOSACQ-50 consists of 50 items across 7 OSC dimensions, i.e. group members’ shared perceptions of: 1) management safety priority, commitment and competence; 2) management safety empowerment; 3) management safety justice; 4) workers’ safety commitment; 5) workers’ safety priority and risk non-acceptance; 6) safety communication, learning, and trust in co-workers’ safety competence; 7) workers’ trust in the efficacy of safety systems. To assess the relevance of the NOSACQ-50 items, a revised version of the instrument was sent to 11 military safety experts. In addition, 19 items pertaining to areas not covered by NOSACQ-50 were validated by the same experts. After contents validation, data from 517 participants from 4 garrisons were collected. The results showed that NOSACQ-50 had acceptable reliability scores (.70-.89.), and the factor structure was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Principal component analyses (PCA) of the supplementary 19 items showed that 12 items grouped into three dimensions (alpha .74-.91): Management enabling safety performance, personnel’s knowledge of and competence in national laws regulating safety and Unit ethics. In conclusion, preliminary results showed the adjusted NOSACQ-50 instrument could be used to measure OSC in military organizations. However, additional studies must be performed to improve and develop military specific dimensions not covered by NOSACQ-50.

Construction is one of the highest industries in contributing to work accident rates. Unsafe act is the cause of 73% of work accidents. One way to prevent unsafe act is through safe behavior implemented by management and workers themselves. This study aims to determine the correlation between the safety climate with unsafe act. This research uses quantitative analytic methods with cross sectional design study. Data was analyzed using chi-square with a sample of 88 people selected by purposive sampling method. The results showed that the proportion of respondents who frequently perform unsafe acts was 33%. In bivariate analysis showed there were a relevant relationship between the dimensions of management safety empowerment (OR 2.455; 95% CI 1.06-5.87), worker’s safety priority and risk non-acceptance (OR 2.679; 95% CI 1.05- 6,83) and the dimensions of safety communication, learning and trust in co-worker’s safety competence (OR 2,500; 95% CI 1.05-5.91) with unsafe act. Workers who have a good perception of a safety climate rarely take unsafe actions.

Organisations are interested in how to get the best performance out of their workforce and this study focuses on creativity behaviours. The present study focuses on psychological safety climate, which relates to shared beliefs amongst co-workers regarding the safety for risk-taking in their work teams. We combine this with another organisational factor and a psychological factor towards testing a robust model of employee creativity behaviours. These factors include organisational-based self-esteem (OBSE) as a mediator and climate for innovation as a moderator, and we then examine these in combination (moderated mediation). Using a sample of 269 diverse employees, we find psychological safety climate is positively related to creativity behaviours and OBSE, and OBSE influences creativity behaviours and fully mediates the effect of psychological safety climate. We also find a significant interaction effect, showing that the highest creativity behaviour is registered when there is high psychological safety climate and high climate for innovation. We also find a significant moderated mediation effect whereby the indirect effect of psychological safety climate on creativity behaviours (through OBSE) increases when climate for innovation gets stronger. We discuss the implications for managing people and teams.

There has been an increased interest in the study of emotional demands (ED) at work and its impact on workers’ well-being. However, ED have been conceptualized as a unitary concept, focused on interactions with clients, and excluding other potential sources of ED at work. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to explore the relation between ED from different relational sources (clients/patients/customers and colleagues, supervisors, and employees) and service workers’ exhaustion and engagement. Cross-sectional data from a sample of 2742 service workers were analysed using structural equation modelling. Results showed that ED from both sources (clients and colleagues) were associated with more emotional exhaustion, particularly if dealing with clients was not an integrated part of the role. Further, ED from clients’ relations were negatively associated with engagement for managers with staff responsibility, but positively for managers without staff responsibility. We also found moderating effects of psychosocial safety climate (PSC), whereby ED had the strongest effect on emotional exhaustion when PSC was low. This study suggests that different relational sources of ED at work have a different impact on employees’ well-being. Strategies that promote a reduction of extra-role ED, and the development of a PSC in the organization, could therefore offer possible solutions to promote employees’ psychological well-being and motivation.

The Padma Bridge, being the largest infrastructure development project of Bangladesh, required extensive environmental safeguards to make the dream project of Bangladesh environmentally sound. Threat to biodiversity particularly breeding and migration of HIlsha (Tenualosa ilisha) fish, safe disposal of 50 million m3 of dredging spoils, disturbances and displacement of wildlife, conservation of biodiversity, plantation of trees lost to the project, control of construction related noise, air and water pollution, occupational health and safety of the workers were the main environmental impacts of the project. An Environmental Action Plan (EAP) with effective protective measures was successfully implemented. Environmental monitoring of quality of both surface and drinking water, ambient noise level, concentration of PM10, PM2.5, CO, ozone, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur in ambient air, disposal of domestic, construction and hazardous wastes, disposal of dredged spoils, use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and safety at work sites were conducted regularly by a team constituted for this purpose throughout the project period and protective measures were adopted as and when required. Increased flow, water level and temperature in Padma River due to climate change were considered in the design of the Bridge. A wildlife sanctuary has been established in the project area for flourishing of flora and fauna in the protected environment.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Globally, the construction industry is known to have a high rate of recorded accidents, fatalities, or injuries. Historically, the behaviour of workers concerning safety matters was recognised as a significant factor leading to poor safety outcomes. Recently, insights from assessing workers’ safety climate have been used to improve workers’ safety. These insights often tend to focus on a worker’s perception about the leadership and/or self rather than the workgroup within which one operates. Considering the physical and social proximity of construction activities, the lack of attention on social and team practices, which are vital to construction activities, has resulted in challenges to accident reduction rates. Despite this, there is a limited body of knowledge on factors that influence workers’ perceptions, especially in the workgroup among co-workers. Owing to this, safety interventions have been suggested as possible antecedents that improve safety climate. Hence, this research aims to investigate how human safety interventions (HSIs) affect workgroup safety climate and co-workers’ safety behaviour. A quantitative approach employing a strategy using a cross-sectional survey collected data from 317 trade workers within five large commercial construction projects in New South Wales, Australia. Exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, and covariance-based structural equation modelling were used to develop and validate the HSI constructs. Following this, variance-based structural equation modelling was used to validate the theoretical model by evaluating thirteen proposed hypotheses. Due to the complexity of the model, another model was further developed to examine how co-workers’ safety outcomes influence workers’ perceptions about safety priority. Results from validating the HSI construct revealed two factors: psychological safety interventions and sociological safety interventions. An intersection was found between the two factors suggesting that they should be regarded as reflective-reflective higher-order constructs. Because the two factors tap into the same underlying concept. Thirteen out of the fourteen hypotheses were supported. The results suggest that HSIs do not directly influence co-workers’ safety behaviour. Instead, an increase in HSIs strengthens the relationship between how workers’ perceived the value of safety and co-workers’ safety behaviour. The study shows that, through social exchanges, the provision of HSIs positively improves workgroup safety climate. The relationship between supervisory environment and workgroup safety climate was strengthened by HSIs. A partial mediation was revealed, as the supervisory environment influences the workgroup safety climate through HSIs. An increase in safety outcomes was found to decrease the workgroup safety climate. The study also identified a route to reducing the number of accidents and near-misses on construction sites. The implication of the research is that it identifies supervisory environment, co-workers’ safety outcomes and HSIs as factors influencing the perceptions workers’ form about the priority of safety in their organisation. These outcomes contribute to the expansion of the safety climate theory in construction. The study confirms the role HSIs play in reducing risks and uncertainties while improving workers’ safety knowledge and reasoning. The implementation of HSIs by construction managers or safety professionals offers a fertile ground for the formation of workgroup safety climate. The study also stresses the need for a focus on co-workers as they are important agents of change in the development of safety perceptions by other workers. In addition, the research contributes to the development and validation of the HSI construct in construction. The validated HSI scale may be used to identify potential weaknesses within existing construction safety regimes. The scale has the potential, alongside other established safety constructs to function as a modifying factor in cultivating desired behaviours. The research also contributes to the categorisation of safety climate dimensions at various levels of climate analysis. Finally, the study provides implications for practice and recommendations for further study.

In questi ultimi anni il clima di sicurezza nelle organizzazioni è divenuto un argomento sempre più rilevante, sia dal punto di vista scientifico sia da quello applicativo, dal momento che se ne è riscontrata la capacità di influire sulla performance di sicurezza dei lavoratori. Esso si è nel tempo affermato in alternativa alla cultura di sicurezza – atteggiamenti, credo, percezioni e valori che i lavoratori condividono riguardo alla sicurezza (Cox e Cox, 1991) – in quanto più facilmente misurabile (Cox & Flin, 1998; Hale, 2000; Guldenmund, 2000). Negli ultimi dieci anni molti ricercatori si sono concentrati a studiare la capacità predittiva del clima di sicurezza rispetto alla performance di sicurezza (e.g. Zohar, 2000, Zohar & Luria, 2005; Clarke, 2006; Griffin & Neal, 2000; Nahrgang, Morgeson & Hofmann, 2007; Christian, Bradley, Wallace, & Burke, 2009). Christian et al. (2009) nel loro lavoro meta-analitico identificano il clima come leading indicator della performance di sicurezza e buon predittore anche degli outcome di sicurezza oggetti. A partire da uno studio approfondito della letteratura, propongono uno schema concettuale integrato per spiegare l'influenza di fattori distali situazionali e personali sulla performance e sugli outcome di sicurezza. Nonostante questi risultati, a partire dalle rassegne e dagli studi meta-analitici disponibili, Zohar (2010) evidenzia come ci siano tuttavia ancora alcune questioni aperte riguardo allo studio del clima di sicurezza, sia dal punto di vista concettuale sia dal punto di vista metodologico. Dal punto di vista concettuale egli sottolinea ad esempio l'uso indistinto dei concetti di clima e di cultura di sicurezza, e dei relativi strumenti di misura, e la confusione nel definire cosa sia clima e quali siano le dimensioni da cui esso è caratterizzato. Dal punto di vista metodologico, egli mette in evidenza ad esempio l'ambiguità nella scelta di item che a volte confondono i livelli di analisi, e l'uso di metodi di analisi che non sempre tengono conto del carattere multilivello dei dati riguardanti il clima di sicurezza. A tale proposito Shannon & Norman (2009) sottolineano come sia importante che, se i dati raccolti sono per loro natura multilivello, essi devono essere anche analizzati con metodi adeguati a tale caratteristica. Accanto alla questione di cosa sia il clima di sicurezza, e di quali siano le caratteristiche di tale costrutto, nonché alla necessità di considerarne la dimensione multilivello, sia in termini concettuali che in termini di analisi dei dati, una terza questione è quella degli agenti del clima. Secondo alcuni autori, infatti, nel momento in cui si prende in considerazione il clima a livello di gruppo di lavoro, non è sufficiente considerare soltanto il diretto supervisore: gli stessi colleghi che che fanno parte del gruppo hanno una forte influenza sui comportamenti dei singoli lavoratori. (e.g. Melià, Mearns, Silva & Lima, 2008) Alla luce di queste riflessioni, è nato questo lavoro, che si propone in primo luogo di offrire un strumento integrato per la rilevazione del clima di sicurezza, che tenti di tenere in considerazione gli interrogativi ancora aperti, integrando e combinando gli sguardi di diversi autori su tale argomento, in particolare di Melià, di Zohar e di Griffin & Neal. Innanzitutto, si tratta di uno strumento che tiene in considerazione in modo chiaro i diversi livelli in cui il clima si può e si deve misurare (organizzativo e di gruppo, e, in relazione alla dimensione di gruppo, con attenzione al supervisore e con attenzione ai colleghi di lavoro) con l'introduzione della misurazione del clima dei colleghi di lavoro accanto a quello dei classici referenti del clima, quali la direzione aziendale e i preposti. In secondo luogo, tale strumento vuole essere attento anche alle specifiche dimensioni del clima di sicurezza (Griffin & Neal, 2000), così da non essere privato di quelle sfumature che possono renderlo anche un concreto mezzo diagnostico per costruire interventi migliorativi mirati e quindi maggiormente efficaci. Una terza attenzione che ha guidato la costruzione di tale strumento è stata quella, così come viene suggerito dallo stesso Zohar (2010), che esso non fosse generico, ma fosse definito e predisposto per essere utilizzato in uno specifico settore e per una particolare fascia di lavoratori: lo strumento costruito attraverso questa ricerca si occupa in particolare di misurare il clima di sicurezza dei lavoratori impiegati in produzione nella realtà delle imprese del settore metalmeccanico. Questi obiettivi vengono portati avanti con una attenzione statistico-metodologica che fino ad oggi si è rilevata, solo occasionalmente nella letteratura studiata, ovvero attraverso l'uso di una analisi confermativa multilivello, che appunto sia attenta alla struttura gerarchica dei dati considerati (Shannon & Norman, 2009). Il processo di validazione ha evidenziato buone proprietà psicometriche. La presente ricerca non si ferma, tuttavia, all'aspetto della validazione di tale originale strumento di misura del clima di sicurezza. Un secondo obiettivo, presentato in un secondo studio, è quello di esplorare la relazione tra il sistema di clima di sicurezza centrato sugli agenti di clima e i comportamenti di sicurezza. Si è partiti dunque dal modello definito da Zohar (Zohar & Luria, 2005) e da quello proposto da Melià e i suoi collaboratori (Melià et al., 2008), verificando il ruolo di mediazione svolto dal clima di sicurezza relativo ai colleghi di lavoro. Lo studio del modello così costruito è stato condotto sempre non dimenticando la struttura gerarchica dei dati, e quindi utilizzando un modello di equazioni strutturali multilivello. I risultati delle analisi confermano il valore predittivo del clima di sicurezza riferito ai colleghi di lavoro sulla performance di sicurezza, valore predittivo che nel secondo studio si rivela addirittura maggiore di quello del clima relativo al preposto. Inoltre evidenzia come il clima di sicurezza relativo ai colleghi abbia effettivamente un ruolo di mediazione importante per le relazioni tra clima di sicurezza organizzativo e comportamenti di sicurezza e tra clima di sicurezza riferito al preposto e comportamenti di sicurezza. Infine, un terzo obiettivo, presentato in un terzo studio, è stato quello di testare il modello concettuale proposto da Griffin & Neal (2000) e successivamente verificato attraverso il lavoro meta-analitico di Christian et al. (2009), che considera anche le determinanti dei comportamenti di sicurezza, ovvero motivazione e conoscenza, come mediatori della relazione tra clima e performance di sicurezza. La novità consiste nell'ampliare questo modello a partire dalla consapevolezza della molteplicità degli agenti di clima: il modello viene cioè integrato con l'aggiunta delle specificazioni dei diversi climi, in un sistema di relazioni che è quello verificato nello studio precedente. Sempre attraverso l'uso di tecniche di analisi dei dati multilivello, è stata verificata la buona capacità predittiva del modello così integrato, rispetto alla performance di sicurezza, e agli outcome di sicurezza, valutati specificamente come infortuni e micro-incidenti self-report. L'intero percorso ha coinvolto nel suo complesso 10 aziende del settore metalmeccanico del Veneto, suddivise tra piccole, medie e grandi, per un totale di 1705 lavoratori in produzione o attività affini (l'83,2% degli operai impiegati in tali aziende).
Safety climate has been one of the most frequently studied antecedents of safety performance in the last thirty years. It is commonly defined as the shared perceptions of the employees on policies, procedures, and practices relating to safety. A large number of scales to assess safety climate have been created in last two decades. Nevertheless, meta-analytic studies and reviews on safety climate reveal that some issues are still open from a theoretical and methodological point of view. From a theoretical point of view, for example there is still ambiguity about safety climate themes and dimensions. From a methodological point of view there is confusion about the levels of analysis, because many measuring instruments in safety climate research use items referring at the same time to organizational, group and individual levels. Furthermore, authors analysing safety climate did not always considered its multilevel structure and the importance to use adequate techniques to approach multilevel data: if the data collected are multilevel in nature they should be analysed accordingly. Safety climate can be investigated at two hierarchical levels: group level and organizational level. At the group level, safety climate usually refers to the role of supervisor and not to co-workers. The role of co-workers has been studied regarding different aspects: co-workers’ support, co-workers’ practices, social norms, co-workers’ interaction, and also regarding a more generalized content as co-worker safety. Co-workers can be identified as a safety agent as much important as the organization and the supervisor, and organizational and supervisor's safety response significantly and positively predict co-workers' safety response. The present research offers an instrument to measure safety climate by the safety agents' point of view (organization, supervisor, co-workers) and to study the relationships between the integrated system of safety climates, inspired by Zohar and Melià studies on safety climate, and workers' safety performance with a multilevel approach. In particular the research is composed of three studies. The main aim of the first study was to propose a questionnaire combining different approaches to safety climate, to give a contribute about these issues. This study led to the development of a new questionnaire to measure safety climate, suitable for blue-collar workers in the industrial sector. A multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) was used to properly evaluate the factor structure underlying the safety climate questionnaire composed of three scales: Organizational Safety Climate (OSC) scale, Supervisor's Safety Climate (SSC) scale and Co-workers' Safety Climate (CSC) scale. The clear distinction, made with the use of three different scales, among safety agents (organization, supervisor, co-workers), gives an instrument to assess workers' perceptions focused on each level, and allows to deeply explore, for instance, lateral relationships of supervisor's safety climate and co-workers' safety climate, analysing the interactions between the roles of these two safety agents. A two-level design was used, considering the individual level and the work-group level. Data collection involved 1312 blue-collars from 7 Italian manufacturing companies. The MCFA results demonstrated the importance to use proper analysis to study the factor structure of a multilevel construct as safety climate, and confirmed the theoretical structure of safety climate purposed by Griffin and colleagues, using not only psychological climate (that is, the individual level), but also the group level safety climate. They purposed a structure with a global higher order factor, reflecting the extent to which employees believe that safety is valued within the organization, and four first order factors, reflecting perceptions on specific facets of safety climate (management values, safety systems, safety training and safety communication). The aim of the second study was to investigate the relationship between safety climate and safety performance, considering safety climate as an integrated system of many climates. Firstly, the evaluation of an integrated system of safety climates with multilevel structural equation modelling was performed. Then, we assessed the relationships between the integrated system of safety climate and safety behaviours using the same technique. To analyse safety climate as an integrated system of safety climates – a system in which safety climate is defined for each safety agent in an organization, not only top management and supervisors, but also co-workers – permits to study more deeply the interactions of different climates at different organizational levels, and the relationships between these climates and safety behaviours. We used a two-level design which considered the individual level and the work-group level. Data collection involved 991 blue-collars, belonging to 91 work groups, from 5 Italian manufacturing companies. The research evidenced the importance of considering, at group level, not only climate referred to supervisor, but also climate referred to co-workers. Furthermore, analyses revealed that co-workers' safety climate had a stronger influence on safety behaviours, and in particular on safety participation, than supervisor's safety climate, at individual level as well at group level. Griffin & Neal (2000) and then Christian, Bradley, Wallace, & Burke (2009) proposed a conceptual framework to organize relationships between antecedents and safety criteria, and tested this structure with a meta-analytic path modelling. The aim of the third study was to combine this conceptual framework with the integrated system of safety climates and to study the resulting model in a multilevel perspective. In this model co-workers' safety climate and supervisor's safety climate were considered as mediators in the relationship between safety climate at the organizational level and determinants (safety motivation and safety knowledge) and components (safety compliance and safety participation) of safety performance. A two-level design which considered the individual level and the work-group level was performed. Data collection involved 673 blue-collars, belonging to 63 work groups, from 5 Italian manufacturing companies. The results confirm the mediating role of safety performance determinants in the relationships between the safety climates' system and safety performance, and the role of the system of safety climates as leading predictor of safety performance. In conclusion, the present research could be considered as one of the first attempt to investigate a global and integrated framework on the influence of safety climate, as a system of safety agents' climates, on safety performance with multilevel structural equation modelling analyses. We hope that it can be a contribution for the development of a more integrated and proper approach in safety climate research. Furthermore, we hope that the developed questionnaire for blue-collars workers in Italian industrial sector becomes an instrument to promote the safety climate analyses as an important step in safety management systems of Italian industrial companies.