Role overload and safety incidents: An examination of the individual- and team-level buffering effects of psychological safety

This study evaluated the how psychological safety can buffer the effects of role overload on safety incidents.

Data was from 841 employees across 100 teams in a large Australian health service.

Extracts:

· The analysis revealed that “role overload positively relates to safety incidents”

· Role overload is defined as quantitative role overload, occuring “when an individual perceives that the volume and pace of work they are required to perform is excessive”

· This stressor therefore depletes energy resources, exposing employees to “to greater risk of experiencing a safety incident”, resulting from cognitive factors like “inattention, fatigue, and distraction”

· Safety incidents included a sum of “reported safety incidents,” “unreported safety incidents,” and “near misses”

· For psychological safety’s effects, they say “psychological safety is a team-, rather than an individual-, level moderating resource that confers protection for employees by buffering the effects of role overload on safety incidents”

· The relationship between role overload and safety incidents was “weaker (de-intensified) with high… levels of team psychological safety and intensified when team psychological safety is low”

· In psychologically safer teams, the members “feel supported and can request help when under pressure” and can “look out for each other in terms of potential risks and provide assistance”

· Contrary to prediction, the study “did not find a statistically significant individual-level interaction” with individual psychological safety and role overload

· Further, while it didn’t act as a moderate, a significant effect was found with “higher levels of psychological safety associated with fewer incidents”

· They argue that the finding that only team-level PS moderated the relationship “challenges the homology assumption… that the effects of psychological safety are the same at different levels of analysis”

· “Employees should individually and collectively invest resources to create a climate of psychological safety”

· Leaders are “advised to focus on interventions to enhance team-level psychological safety”

· And PS interventions should include promoting “supportive environments to encourage team cohesion, initiative taking, accountability, and via their leadership development”

Ref: Donohue, R., Cooper, B., De Cieri, H., Sheehan, C., & Shea, T. (2026). Role overload and safety incidents: An examination of the individual-and team-level buffering effects of psychological safety. Safety Science, 193, 107008.