Improving safety climate and behavior through a multifaceted intervention: Results from a field experiment

Background – Improving safety climate in organizations could lead to better safety behavior of employees. However, current field experimental studies leave three gaps. First, they often focus on direct supervisors while not... [ view full abstract ]

Background – Improving safety climate in organizations could lead to better safety behavior of employees. However, current field experimental studies leave three gaps. First, they often focus on direct supervisors while not taking into account the influence of colleagues and senior management. Second, most are conducted in specific industrial settings like metal processing. It is important to study safety climate interventions in diverse settings. Third, studies do not take into account the implementation process of the intervention.

Methods – We aimed to fill these gaps by testing the effects of a multifaceted safety climate intervention. The intervention included 1) senior management safety rounds, 2) coaching supervisors on safety specific transformational leadership and 3) an online platform for team members to discuss safety issues followed by team-meetings. We analyzed data of 520 employees (258 treatment, 262 control) in five health care organizations and studied the intervention process.

Results – At post-intervention the intervention group safety climate and behavior was significantly higher as compared to the control group, while there were no differences pre-intervention. We also found that the employees who experienced a stronger implementation process experienced higher post-intervention safety climate and behavior.

Conclusions – This study presents a new safety climate intervention strategy that can be useful for improving safety climate and behavior. It also shows the importance of the implementation process when conducting interventions.