Accident Analysis and Prevention 39 (2007) 1088–1096

Roles of safety climate and shift work on perceived injury risk: A multi-level analysis

Speaker: Jenny2009/03/31

Objective

• To examine the relationships among employees’ work shift, safety climate, injury frequency, and perceived injury risk

Outline

• Introduction– Work shift– Safety climate– Company level injury frequency

• Method• Results• Discussion

Introduction•5703 fatal work and 4.3 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses happened in private industries. (Labor Statistics Bureau, 2004)

•Perceptions of risk is a necessary precursor to protective behaviors. (Will and Geller, 2004)

•Safety can’t be significantly improved until individuals increase their risk perceptions and decrease their tolerance for risk. (van der Plight, 1996)

Introduction•Relationship between risk perception and workplace injuries and accidents (Gabel and Gerberich, 2002; Gucer et al., 2003; Kirschenbaum et al., 2000)

•Risk perceptions could be used to predict work-related injuries among practicing veterinarians in Minnesota.

•Positive relationship between self-reported accidents and perceptions of “work task hazards” in offshore petroleum installations.

Introduction•High level perceptions of injury risk have negative impacts on organization

•Job stress ↑ (Morrow and Crum, 1998, Rundmo, 1992)

•Organizational commitment ↓ (Jermier et al., 1989; Morrow and Crum, 1998)

•Job satisfaction ↓ (Huang etal., 2004b; Jermier et al., 1989; Morrow and Crum, 1998)

•Turnover intentions ↑ (Cree and Kelloway, 1997)

Introduction•This study examines the effects of work shift organizational safety climate and company level injury frequency on workers’ perceptions of injury risk.

•5 hypotheses

•Work shift

•Safety climate

•Company level injury frequency

Introduction

•Work shift

•H1: Night shift workers will perceive that they’re at higher risk of being injured at work than day shift workers.

Introduction•Safety climate

•H2: Safety climate will be negatively related to perceived risk of being injured at work.

•H3: Night shift workers in a strong safety climate environment would perceive a lower risk of being injured at work than other night shift workers in a weak safety climate. Besides, despite of the safety climate strength, the perceptions of injury risk on the day shift workers is smaller.

Introduction

•Company level injury frequency

•H4: there will be a positive relationship between company injury frequency and perception of injury risk at work.

•H5: Company injury frequency moderates the relationship between work shift and perception of injury risk such that night shift workers’ perceptions of injury risk are more significantly impacted by company injury frequency than day shift worker’s perceptions.

Method•Questionnaires

•Safety climate: 14 questions—6-point Likert scale

•6 industries: manufacturing, retail, construction, real estate, service, and transportation industries

•1351 employees in 16 companies

•Company level: safety climate, company injury frequency

•Control variables: age, tenure, gender, part/full-time work, prior injury experience

•Analytical approach

Method

•Analytical approach

Results•Night shift: more male, more part-time job, younger

•No difference between 2 work shifts: injury experience, tenure

Results•Positive association between night shift and perceived risk of injury. (p<0.05) H1

•Safety climate and injury frequency could predict the perception of being injured. H2 & H4

•Significant interaction between safety climate and night shift work. (p<0.01) H3

•Company injury frequency didn’t moderate the relationship between work shift and perceptions of injury risk. H5 X

Conclusions•This study examined plausible antecedents of risk perception, including individual and organizational level predictors.

•Both company level safety climate and injury frequency could predict individual perception of injury risk.

•More positive safety climate less injury risk perception

•Lower injury frequency less injury risk perception

Conclusions

• Safety climate has greater effects on night shift workers than day shift workers.– Less interaction with human, peak time

of sleep

• Limit: the model only include some predictors.

• Future research: safety behaviors, accidents, injury severity

The End