Multilevel Safety Culture and Climate Survey for Assessing New Safety Program

Abstract

Construction safety culture is becoming a typical proactive safety performance measurement and strategy for safety improvement. However, there is no accepted industry wide definition for safety culture. There is also no clear distinction between safety culture and safety climate. So far, little research has investigated how safety programs can be developed to improve safety culture and climate, which in turn can be used to assess the effectiveness of these programs. This paper presents a study that examined the multilevel safety culture and climate to assess a newly launched safety program. Specifically, three different questionnaires were used to survey 71 top executives, 229 site management personnel, and 350 field workers, respectively. This study found wide acceptance of the program across all three groups, strong management accountability in enforcing safety, and a positive general safety climate among workers. The results demonstrated the program’s overall effectiveness in building positive safety culture and climate despite a few identified weaknesses. Based on these findings and insightful employee feedback, this paper offers generalized recommendations to help industry practitioners develop high-quality safety programs. The presented survey instruments and analysis methods can also be used to holistically assess safety programs and related safety culture and climate.