This examined the relationship between having ideas about improving safety, speaking up about the ideas (safety voice), and future work-related injuries amongst young workers.
155 employed teenagers completed 3 surveys with 1 month between.
Safety voice here is defined as raising objections or ideas to change “objectionable state of affairs”, and includes formal proposals, “faint grumblings” and unsanctioned campaigns by activist employees to change areas of dissatisfaction.
Results:
Young workers who reported having ideas about how to improve safety reported higher safety voice one month later than those two were less likely to have safety-related ideas. The relationship was stronger for workers who reported being more highly committed to their organisation than those who felt less org. commitment.
For consequences of safety voice, found was that the frequency of speaking up about safety issues wasn’t directly related to future workplace injuries. But, higher levels of safety voice were related to higher workplace injuries when workers experienced a supervisor who was less open to or was indifferent to listening to their safety concerns, compared to people who had a supervisor who was more opening to listening.
For workers reporting high safety voice & perceiving high supervisor indifference to hearing concerns, higher instances of work-related injuries one month later were reported by these people. [This echoes other research finding that if people *feel* unsafe, they *are* unsafe].
Given that younger workers are more reluctant to voice concerns unless their perceived harm is particularly serious, when they do eventually voice concerns these concerns should be taken seriously. Those reporting heightened levels of safety voice were said to be likely experiencing the greatest risk of future injury.
Authors argue in their view that “safety voice has an important role as an early indicator that safety conditions are declining and in need of attention” (p77).
Authors also note that their findings “suggest that the exchange of safety-related ideas with a supervisor is critical to processes of managing safety effectively and injury prevention” (p77).
Young workers with ideas to improve safety may not strongly participate in the overarching safety approach by speaking up to supervisors if they “feel little emotional connection to their Organization” “(p77).
No significant relationship was found between gender & safety voice on workplace injuries. Other research found that young females are more likely to speak up about safety concerns, but in this study this wasn’t found.
Nevertheless, it’s said that further research is needed here and that there may be an implication where “the psychological safety of voicing may be more important than whether the participant is male or female” (p78).
Overall, it’s concluded that ideas about improving safety alone may be insufficient for promoting voice amongst young workers. That is, organisation’s need to “take steps to cultivate among young workers both the development and expression of ideas about improving safety and organizational commitment” (p79)
Second, orgs. although the paper says that organisation’s need to impress upon supervisors to listen to concerns, this applies across the whole organisation and senior hierarchies also, in conjunction to establishing norms, values, routines & structural means to deliver on this goal.
Finally, the results “point to the harm that can be caused by supervisors who do not listen to safety concerns raised” (p79) and I’d argue, to organisations without a psychologically safe environment and the structural means to hear the bad news.
SafetyInsights.org 