Dr. Sean Tucker provided an overview of the current state of research on occupational health and safety leadership in organizations. This considers the role of leadership at different organizational levels on various health and safety outcomes.
Dr. Tucker used Peter Northouse’s definition of leadership which defines leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.” Dr. Tucker began with the theory of transformational leadership which is a leadership style that encourages, inspires and motivates employees to make changes and be creative to shape the future success of an organization. This theory follows a sequential model that includes:
• leadership + position
• safety climate/culture
• employee behaviour, and
• outcomes.
Leadership + position is the first step in the theory of transformational leadership. CEOs, managers and supervisors have a responsibility to instill health and safety into their employees. The process includes:
• Making ethical decisions to do what is right
• Being charismatic to appeal and resonate to people
• Being intellectually stimulating to encourage others to come up with their own solutions to problems
• Being respectful, considerate and mindful of individual needs
• Providing rewards or praise to workers for good health and safety practices.
Safety climate or culture is the extent to which employees perceive that safety and safe behaviour is genuinely valued and rewarded in an organization. It speaks to the relative importance of safety in a setting and is a leading indicator of safety performance. Safety starts from the top and trickles down in the organizational hierarchy. Positive employee perceptions, behaviours and actions on health and safety relate to the actions of the CEOs, managers and supervisors. An organization with a strong safety climate/culture is positively associated with a decrease in the number of worker accidents and injuries.
The key takeaway from this presentation was that high quality leadership positively influences safety climate which is related to employee behaviours leading to lower accident and injury rates.
Thank you, Dr. Sean Tucker, for this informative and important presentation.
