This study looked at the relationships between safety climate, injuries, and setting SMART goals (including goals related to zero injuries).
564 surveys from across 26 high voltage electrical contractors were analysed.
Results:
1. Safety climate wasn’t found to be correlated to self-reports of injury, nor to lost-time or no-lost time injury statistics.
2. Safety climate was strongly and positively correlated with organisations setting at least partly SMART safety goals. This relationship was “very strongly correlated when setting a goal of zero injuries and moderately and inversely correlated to self-reports of injury” (p1).
3. No significant differences in injury experience between unionised and non-unionised electrical contracting firms when compared to the safety climate was found.
4. A significant correlation was found between safety climate and the firm setting safety goals, including a goal of zero injuries. That is, firms reported to have “positive” orientated safety climates are more likely to have set safety goals [although the direction of the relationship isn’t known or discussed, such that companies with positive safety climates may be more likely to create goals rather than goals helping them to achieve higher safety climate performance.]
Compared to some other studies, this found no significant link between safety climate and self-reported injuries.
Although a statistically significant and negative correlation was found between the firm setting safety goals and worker self-reports of injuries, the authors note that the lack of association between LTIs/non-LTIs and setting safety goals means that “People feel safer and report less accidents with or without injuries, but the actual performance has not improved in a company that sets a SMART goal of ‘zero accidents’ (p7, emphasis added).
The authors further explain that “Setting such SMART safety goals as a way to improve the safety climate may lure both the management and employees of an organization into a false sense of achievement: the perceived level of safety goes up, however this change in perception is not matched with an actual improvement in safety performance” (p7).
They conclude that management need to do more than just setting SMART goals and especially if changes in climate are seen as a goal rather than a means, performance will not improve.
Authors: Jop Groeneweg, Patrick T.W. Hudson, Ted Vandevis, Giulio E. Lancioni
Study link: https://doi.org/10.2118/127152-MS
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-improving-safety-climate-doesnt-always-improve-ben-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 