Safety Climate and Supervisory-Based Interventions

This chapter reviews current knowledge about group-level safety climate, and discusses group processes from a multilevel perspective. First, it explains the individual-level rationale of employee safety decision-making and behavior. The chapter explores why some employees behave in an unsafe manner, and why organizational practices are needed in order to correct such behavior. It also discusses organizational influence on groups or units within an organization. Multilevel safety climate research has indicated that group-level safety climate perceptions emerge in each sub-unit of an organization. Climate modifies methods of improving safety in organizations because it focuses on perceptions. Behavioral safety interventions focus on employees and modify their safety behavior by offering short-term rewards intended to outweigh the immediate costs of behaving safely. This is the “antecedent-behavior-consequence” (ABC) framework in regard to safety behavior; employees are offered antecedents such as safety training and goals, an approach based on cost-benefit analyses of safe behavior.