Properties of group safety climate in construction: the development and evaluation of a typology

Abstract

A safety climate survey was conducted in three Australian construction industry organizations. Workers’ perceptions of their supervisors’ safety response (SSR) and co‐workers’ safety response (CSR) were measured as facets of group safety climate. A two‐dimensional schema was developed based upon the strength and the level of group safety climate. The resulting framework was used to position the 40 workgroups included in the sample within one of four group safety climate types. A non‐parametric Kruskal Wallis test revealed that workgroups in which members share a strong consensus that co‐workers should treat safety as a priority had a significantly lower injury frequency rate than other workgroups in the sample. While no significant differences between the injury frequency rates of workgroups positioned in the four safety climate types were found for the other facets of group safety climate, workgroups with strong and high (i.e. strongly supportive) safety climates related to supervisors’ safety expectations and co‐workers’ actual safety behaviour reported injury frequency rates on average two‐thirds the magnitude of the remaining workgroups in the sample. Although limited by the reliance on retrospective and insensitive measurement for the dependent variable (i.e. injury frequency rates), the research provides preliminary evidence for the importance of considering both the strength and level of group safety climates in the construction industry. Future research should seek to replicate and extend this research by examining the antecedents of group safety climate strength and level in the construction context.

Keywords:

• Group safety climate
• supervisors’ safety response
• co‐workers’ safety response
• climate strength
• climate level

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council under Linkage Project Grant LP0668012.