Effect of management awareness of safety climate concept on organizational safety climate

Abstract

Safety research and practice have shifted focus away from accident rates and accident causal information to a more proactive approach that may predict organizational safety trends. This proactive approach involves the concept of an organizational safety culture and the use of surveys to measure organizational safety climate or „snapshot‟ of the organizational safety culture. Surveys were administered to line workers, supervisors, and managers at a modular home manufacturing company before and after safety climate information was presented to supervisors and managers in an attempt to measure the effect of the supervisors‟ and managers‟ increased awareness of the factors that define organizational safety climate as well as investigate potential differences between line workers and supervisors/managers perceptions of the organizational safety climate. Two-way, mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA) found no significant differences in the survey responses within each group (line workers, supervisors/managers) between two surveys, and between the groups in each survey. Additionally, the survey responses were divided into groups based on the nine safety climate factors that the questions measured and the same analysis was conducted, with no significant differences found. While the safety climate information presentation led to no significant changes in the overall perceived safety climate of the company, the time factor in the study was a limitation and the potential for the application of similar methods in additional studies exists.