Abstract
Recent changes in the world of work have led to increased job demands with subsequent effects on occupational safety. Although work intensification has been linked to detrimental safety behavior and more accidents, there is so far no sufficient explanation for this relationship. This paper investigates the mediating roles of safety climate, safety motivation, and safety knowledge in the relationships of work intensification with components of safety performance at an organizational level. Safety engineers and managers from 122 Austrian high-accident companies participated in a cross-sectional survey. In line with our hypotheses, work intensification negatively related to both components of safety performance: safety compliance and safety participation. The results of a serial multiple mediation analysis further revealed safety climate and safety motivation to be serial mediators of the relationship between work intensification and safety performance. Unexpectedly, safety knowledge and safety climate only serially mediated the relationship between work intensification and safety compliance, but not the relationship between work intensification and safety participation. This study provides evidence for the detrimental effect of work intensification on safety performance across organizations. Additionally, this study offers an explanation as to how work intensification affects safety performance, enabling practitioners to protect their occupational safety procedures and policies from work intensification.
Highlights
The intensification of work has been one of the most significant changes in the world of work since the 1980s (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work [EASHW], 2007)
The internal consistencies were satisfactory for work intensification, safety climate, safety motivation, and safety knowledge (α ≥ 0.83)
In line with our hypotheses building on previous studies (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work [EASHW], 2007; Quinlan and Bohle, 2009; Tregaskis et al, 2013), we found that work intensification was negatively related to safety compliance and safety participation at the organizational level
Summary
The intensification of work has been one of the most significant changes in the world of work since the 1980s (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work [EASHW], 2007). Automation and digitalization facilitate faster decision processes and shorter production cycles, halts in production owing to maintenance, human error, or unforeseen events threaten output goals and can generate high expenses for companies. This increases the pressure on employees to work at a higher speed (Green, 2004) and/or reduce their breaks (Roberts, 2007). This culminates in work intensification which, in addition to work and time pressure, requires employees to continuously invest more work effort to complete more work in less time (Green and McIntosh, 2001)
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