Organizational support and safety outcomes: An un-investigated relationship?

1
Organizational support and safety outcomes An
un-investigated relationship?

• Kathryn Mearns Tom Reader
• Industrial Psychology Research Centre
• University of Aberdeen

2
Background

• Relationship between health investment and LTIs
  (Mearns, Whitaker Flin, 2003)
• Organizational investment in health results in
  positive employee behaviours (Mearns Hope,
  2005)
• Current study investigates relationship between
  perceived organizational support (POS)
  supervisor/co-worker support for health safety
  citizenship behaviour
• POS reflects employees beliefs about an
  organizations support, commitment and care
  towards them (Eisenberger, Huntingdon, Hutchison
  Sowa,1986), particularly if that support is
  discretionary
• SCB reflects safety related discretionary
  behaviours that go beyond those formally
  prescribed by the organization and for which
  there are no direct rewards (Organ, 1988, 1994)

3
Context

• Offshore industry high-hazard/high-reliability
• Strong focus on SMS and safety training
• Safety management mandatory
• Occupational health management mandatory
• Little variance between organisations
• Proactive promotion of personal health, e.g.
  healthy eating, exercise is discretionary
• More variance between organisations
• Meets requirement of organizational support

4
Measures

• Perceived Organisational Support
• 13 items from Eisenberger et al.,1986 Ribisl
  Reischl,1993), e.g. operating companys
  commitment to the well-being of employees
• Supervisor Co-worker Support for Health
• 14 items from Ribisl Reischl (1993) 6 for
  supervisors and 8 for workmates, describing the
  role that colleagues play in improving and
  maintaining the respondents health e.g. sympathy
  afforded by supervisors for health problems
  degree to which workmates share health
  information
• Safety Citizenship Behaviours
• 9 items describing safety behaviours e.g.
  monitoring safety behaviours of workmates,
  informing management about safety problems
  (Geller et al.,1996 Simard and Marchand,1995)
• All measured on 5 point Likert scale ranging
  from 1 Strongly disagree to 5 Strongly agree
• Demographics
• Operator/Contractor status, occupation, length of
  time on installation

5
Results

• 703 questionnaires returned from 18 offshore
  installations (overall response rate 35).
• fixed production platforms, drilling rigs,
  well-service vessels and Floating Production
  Storage and Offloading vessels (FPSOs)
• 84 of respondents identified themselves as
  members of core crew
• 60 claimed they worked for contractor or
  sub-contractor companies
• 19 worked on their installation for lt 1 year
  45 between 1-5 years 22 between 6-10 years
  14 more than 10 years.
• Maintenance (23), administration/management
  (15), production (13), construction (11) and
  catering (10) accounted for most occupations

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Results 1
Table 1 Descriptive statistics (n692)
Cronbachs Alphas show in bold across the
diagonal All correlations significant at the
.001 level (2-tailed)
7
Results 2
Table 2 Stepwise linear regression predicting
safety behaviour
plt.001, plt.05
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Conclusions

• The results indicate that high levels perceived
  general support from the organisation and
  specific support from the supervisor in relation
  to health issues appear to have an impact on
  safety performance outcomes such as intervening
  to assist work colleagues and reporting dangers
• Care and concern for the well-being of workers at
  the organizational and supervisor level leads to
  a reciprocal relationship in terms of increased
  safety behaviour showing that appropriate social
  exchanges within an organisation may lead to
  unanticipated benefits in terms of employee
  performance
• Actually, this is not an un-investigated
  relationship!
• Recent studies, e.g. Craig Wallace, 2006
  Gyekye Saminen, 2005 have also been addressing
  similar issues