Jan K. Wachter

A system of safety management practices and worker engagement for reducing and preventing accidents: An empirical and theoretical investigation

OBJECTIVE The overall research objective was to theoretically and empirically develop the ideas around a system of safety management practices (ten practices were elaborated), to test their relationship with objective safety statistics (such as accident rates), and to explore how these practices work to achieve positive safety results (accident prevention) through worker engagement. METHOD Data were collected using safety manager, supervisor and employee surveys designed to assess and link safety management system practices, employee perceptions resulting from existing practices, and safety performance outcomes. RESULTS Results indicate the following: there is a significant negative relationship between the presence of ten individual safety management practices, as well as the composite of these practices, with accident rates; there is a significant negative relationship between the level of safety-focused worker emotional and cognitive engagement with accident rates; safety management systems and worker engagement levels can be used individually to predict accident rates; safety management systems can be used to predict worker engagement levels; and worker engagement levels act as mediators between the safety management system and safety performance outcomes (such as accident rates). IMPLICATIONS Even though the presence of safety management system practices is linked with incident reduction and may represent a necessary first-step in accident prevention, safety performance may also depend on mediation by safety-focused cognitive and emotional engagement by workers. Thus, when organizations invest in a safety management system approach to reducing/preventing accidents and improving safety performance, they should also be concerned about winning over the minds and hearts of their workers through human performance-based safety management systems designed to promote and enhance worker engagement.

Applying the Neuman Stressor Model for workplace safety

This article applies the Betty Neuman Stressor Model, typically used in nursing education to explain illness causation of the patient, to educating healthcare workers on workplace stressors (i.e., hazards). Prevention strategies for dealing with workplace hazards are discussed in terms of bolstering flexible lines of defense or lines of resistance as described by this stressor model. Key hazards to include in a healthcare safety curriculum or in workplace safety training are provided.