This explored the association between exposure to workplace physical and verbal aggression with workplace injuries and underreporting of accidents and near misses.
In discussing the research, it’s said that victims of workplace aggressive behaviours is high: one out of every six fatal work injury over 213 in the US was due to workplace assaults and violent acts. In some sectors, workplace aggression accounted for up to 16% of all occupational accidents.
364 public transportation personnel were surveyed.
Part of the methodology involved assessing a possible mediating mechanisms between exposure to workplace aggression and reporting behaviours by looking at safety knowledge and safety motivation. It’s hypothesised that workers exposed to workplace aggression may react by investing less time in acquiring or maintaining safety knowledge and have lowered motivation to adhere to company processes, and also worsened attitudes to reporting events.
Results:
Found was that both “verbal and physical aggression significantly predict workplace injuries as well as underreporting” (p190).
Interestingly, exposure to verbal aggression was related to higher rate of underreporting accidents and near misses but physical aggression was only related to the reporting of near misses such that “it was not predictive of underreporting of actual workplace accidents” (195).
Exposure to workplace aggression was related to greater perceived negative consequences of reporting and higher hesitation in reporting – this subsequently predicted actual underreporting behaviours of employees.
Relating to the influences of physical and verbal aggression, respectively, it’s argued that physical aggression links to workplace injuries may be because targets of physical aggression may be placed in more physically hazardous situations, leading to higher injuries. In contrast, verbal aggression has greater impacts on reducing accident reporting and may involve greater levels of fear and intimidation.
Further, it’s said that while physical aggression has the obvious impact on worker safety, this data “indicate that “voices carry” beyond the direct effects on safety to also potentially influence reporting attitudes and subsequent behaviors. Thus, the impacts of aggression do not just carry over to the direct experience of injuries, but also to employees’ willingness to speak out about and report those injuries” (p186).
In other words, this is the scientific way of saying that there is little validity in “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” (at least in this context…but probably most others).
Relating to safety motivation and safety knowledge, these factors were found to be unrelated. Instead, the relationship between workplace aggression and underreporting was better explained by “increases in negative reporting attitudes, rather than decreases in safety knowledge or motivation”, which suggests that aggression may lead “employees to reciprocate by adjusting their accident reporting attitudes, which, in turn, increases their underreporting behaviors” (p195).
The authors then talk about practical significance. In part, it’s said that these findings highlight the importance of organisations to foster civil working environments. This is also critical because workplace exposure to verbal aggression may be so common that it can be “considered as “a normal part of organizational life” (p197).
Link in comments
Authors: Lixin Jiang, Tahira M. Probst, Wendi Benson, Jesse Byrd, 2018, Accident Analysis & Prevention
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2018.02.017
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/voices-carry-effects-verbal-physical-aggression-ben-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 