Occupational Safety Climate Improves Safety Behaviours: What are the Mechanisms? A Longitudinal and Multilevel Study

The main aim of the present study was to test a model for accidents’ prediction, exploring the influence of the social context, more specifically safety climate, on safety behaviours and accidents. In doing that, we also consider the psychological processes (safety motivation and safety knowledge) that influence safety outcomes. We study the social context at the group level and psychological processes, behaviours and accidents at the individual level, using a cross-level design. The group-level context considers the supervisor’s and co-workers’ safety climate. Safety climates, psychological variables and safety behaviours have been assessed at Time 1, and two years later safety behaviours and accidents has been evaluated on the same sample. 1089 workers belonging to 143 work units across the seven companies completed the survey. Results showed that supervisor’s safety climate positively affects safety motivation through the mediation of co-workers’ safety climate. Safety motivation positively affects changes in safety behaviours (participation and compliance) through the mediation of safety knowledge. Finally, safety compliance is negatively related to accidents. No relationship was found between safety participation and accidents. Our study shows that the direct effect of supervisor safety climate on psychological processes disappears when safety climate generated by coworkers is considered. When these shared perceptions concerning the work unit colleagues give a picture of a good climate about safety, each worker shows high level of motivation toward safety issues, which in turn improve safety behaviours and decrease accidents. The importance of the work team in building a safety culture should be emphasized.