Safety climate and fatigue have differential impacts on safety issues

Abstract

Introduction: Safety climate describes a collection of perceptions and practices that encapsulate the general attitude toward safety within an organization. A better safety climate presumably leads to a safer and more effective workplace. However, there are many contributing factors to safety outcomes, and these variables may interact with the safety climate to affect actual safety behaviors. Method: This study examined fatigue as a possible moderator between safety climate and safety outcomes, including actual safety incidents reported, near-misses experienced, and safety underreporting. Structural equation modeling explored this question using a large dataset (N > 11,000) gathered from naval personnel who operate in a challenging work environment and must regularly contend with the consequences of fatigue. Results: Results indicated a differential effect on the relationship between safety climate and safety outcomes; that is, safety climate affected underreporting the most, followed by likelihood of experiencing a near-miss, but had the weakest impact on actual safety reporting. Conversely, fatigue had a comparable impact across all safety outcomes, both directly as a moderating influence when accounting for safety climate. Practical Applications: These findings suggest that safety climate may differentially affect safety outcomes, but fatigue appears to have the same impact across different types of safety issues despite their severity.