Relative influence of senior managers, direct supervisors, and coworkers on employee injuries and safety behaviors

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the relative importance of safety support from three sources—senior managers, direct supervisors, and coworkers—in predicting employee injuries and safety behaviors. While previous research has found that each of these three sources of support is related to better employee safety outcomes, they have never been tested simultaneously in the same model. Using Latané’s (1981) social impact theory as a guide, we hypothesized that safety support from coworkers would be more strongly associated with fewer employee injuries and more frequent safety behaviors than safety support from either senior managers or direct supervisors. We tested this hypothesis in three samples of employees in safety-intensive occupations (Studies 1 and 2: N = 307 and N = 123 railway maintenance workers, respectively; Study 3: N = 205 steelworkers) using relative importance analysis. In Study 1, senior managers were the only source of safety support that significantly related to fewer injuries in the presence of the safety support from the other two sources. In Study 2, coworkers were the strongest predictor of safety compliance, and coworkers and direct supervisors were equally important in predicting safety participation. In Study 3, no source emerged as strongest in predicting safety behaviors. Across all studies, no single source of safety support was consistently strongest in predicting injuries, but all sources of safety support played some role among the three samples in predicting fewer injuries and more frequent safety behaviors. These inconsistent findings call into question the utility of social impact theory in predicting the importance of safety support and suggest that features of context may moderate the relationships. Based on these findings, organizations should ensure safety support from all three sources and consider possible conditions under which sources of safety support may play more or less important roles.