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Perceptions of safety leadership skills: Do employers and employees agree?

The purpose of this study is to determine if managers and supervisors in the sampled organisations self-rate their safety leadership abilities better than their employees rate them and to then feedback any incongruence to the managers and supervisors to assist them in determining their future training needs.

Research questions

  • Do managers and supervisors rate their safety leadership skills positively?
  • Do employees agree with how managers and supervisors rate their safety leadership skills?
  • If a gap exists what explains it?
  • What strategies could be used to close the gap?

Research methods

A critical realist perspective (Sayer, 1992) informs this study. Critical realism supports the use of mixed methods data collection and therefore the use of qualitative background information on the industries under investigation and a survey to collect the data analysed within this perspective to allow for organisational pressures and politics to be taken into account sits within this methodology.

Background data, supporting the data collection, will include information about the manufacturing and construction industries in Western Australia; their organisational culture and safety culture, their legislative safety requirements and the nature of their workforces.

A questionnaire consisting of twenty questions (repeated for both supervisor and employee) rated on a 6 point Liekert scale will include questions such as “My supervisor takes action to promptly fix safety problems” and “My supervisor treats me fairly”. The questionnaire will be distributed to the employees to rate their supervisors safety leadership skills. The same questionnaire will be distributed to the supervisors to self-rate their safety leadership skills.

Researchers

Dr Susanne Bahn, Chief Investigator

Funding body

Edith Cowan University, Faculty of Business and Law, Strategic Research Fund. 

Timeline

December 2011 - November 2012

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