Psychological Safety and Job Performance: The Mediating Role of Work Engagement and Job Crafting

Abstract

Modern organizations ask employees not only to accomplish their tasks, but also to cooperate effectively and be innovative. Psychological safety, the conviction of the employees that the workplace is a safe place, is an important factor in predicting these behaviours, but the explanations for these effects are not fully known. The aim of this study is to investigate the mediating role of work engagement and job crafting in the relationship between psychological safety and three types of work performance: task performance, contextual performance, and creative performance. A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 316 employees (46.52% female). Data were collected with self-report questionnaires. Work engagement and job crafting completely mediated the effect of psychological safety on task performance and contextual performance, but the effect on creative performance was fully mediated only by work engagement. The study contributes to the development of theory by providing an explanatory mechanism in the relationship between psychological safety and three types of performance. From a practical perspective, fostering psychological safety can help organizations to increase employees’ work engagement, job crafting, ultimately leading to enhanced performance.