Defining the constructs of a safety climate measurement tool to determine readiness for a behavioral approach to safety management

Abstract

Safety climate provides an indication of the perceptions of employees with regard to safety management in an organisation. Although there have been many studies on safety climate, a common platform to measure safety climate has not yet been agreed upon. This makes it difficult to compare climate performance across industries and organisations. This study endeavors to identify the common thread that flows through all safety climate studies through extensive literature review and develop safety climate measurement tool in the form a 65 question survey. The survey was validated using confirmatory factor analysis and expert review. The study further looks at the elements of safety climate that affect the behavioral safety management and determines how an organisation performs on those identified elements through descriptive statistic models.100 employees of a large petrochemical organisation based in South Africa participated in the survey. The results required that several of the questions in the survey be reevaluated and therefore the survey will need to be re tested. The results also demonstrated that the sample organisation had considered and implemented the elements of safety climate that are required for a behavioral safety program.