Safety Climate: A Measure of Employees’ Safety Perceptions Backed by Science

Business Wire

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Liberty Mutual Insurance’s Risk Control Services is offering its commercial lines customers a service that helps them identify targeted areas for improving safety. The Liberty Mutual Safety Climate Survey™ helps companies differentiate between the perception of a company’s overall safety culture and its employees’ actual measurement of safety. Safety Climate is employees’ measurable perceptions of management’s commitment to safety and the true safety priorities within an organization as well as a leading injury indicator.

Since 2009, the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety has been studying the scientific validity of Safety Climate surveys, in part with Dov Zohar, Ph.D., who was first to identify Safety Climate as a quantifiable dimension of organizational safety culture. Research shows that a company can have a strong safety culture collectively, but individual employees’ Safety Climate scores may not match an overall strong safety perception and can also vary based on employee tenure.

Safety Climate surveys can be administered to companies with 100 or more employees. The survey consists of two sets of 16 statements that gauge employees’ perceptions of senior management’s commitment to safety and that of their direct supervisor’s. Employees agree or disagree to the statements using a Likert scale of one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree). Risk Control Services can develop action plans that follow the results of a Safety Climate survey.

“Practical application of the safety climate surveys can help companies identify ways to make focused adjustments to safety management systems that, over time, can strengthen safety cultures,” said James Blaser, service director, Liberty Mutual Risk Control Services. “The more employees see and believe that upper management and supervisors are committed to their safety, the more employees typically become committed to safety and tend to follow policies and procedures more closely, and therefore have fewer accidents and injuries.”

Blaser added that Safety Climate survey usage is primarily for companies with strong safety records that want to improve further. “This is most effective in companies where management is already highly engaged in safety policy, where safety processes are based on best practices rather than just regulatory compliance, and where injury rates are lower than industry average.”

MDU Construction Services Group of Bismarck, North Dakota is one such organization. Comprised of 17 construction and specialty trade companies, it implemented the Safety Climate survey in early 2014. “We view the survey as a leading indicator of future safety performance for our companies. We’re really striving to get metrics in place that get beyond the rear-view mirror,” said Frank Richard, vice president, Human Resources and Risk Control. “Our Safety Climate results were about where we thought they would be – solid. We did, however, find areas where we have placed greater emphasis. Our senior management is getting out into the field more often. We’re doing more safety inspections and more safety awareness events.”

Policyholders may contact the Liberty Mutual Risk Control Consulting Center for more information on this service at 866-757-7324 or by email at [email protected]. Learn more about the Safety Climate Survey in the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety’s quarterly scientific update From Research to Reality.

About Liberty Mutual Insurance

Liberty Mutual Insurance helps people preserve and protect what they earn, build, own and cherish. Keeping this promise means we are there when our policyholders throughout the world need us most.

In business since 1912, and headquartered in Boston, Mass., today Liberty Mutual is a diversified insurer with operations in 30 countries and economies around the world. The company is the third largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. based on 2013 direct premium written as reported by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Liberty Mutual is ranked 78^th on the Fortune 100 list of largest corporations in the U.S. based on 2014 revenue. As of December 31, 2014, the company had $124.3 billion in consolidated assets, $104.0 billion in consolidated liabilities, and $39.6 billion in annual consolidated revenue.

Liberty employs more than 50,000 people in approximately 900 offices throughout the world, and we offer a wide range of insurance products and services, including personal automobile, homeowners, accident & health, commercial automobile, general liability, property, surety, workers compensation, group disability, group life, specialty lines, reinsurance, individual life and annuity products. You can learn more by visiting www.libertymutualinsurance.com.

About Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety

Owned and operated by Liberty Mutual Insurance, the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety (www.libertymutualgroup.com/researchinstitute) is an internationally recognized safety and health research facility. Through laboratory and field-based investigations, the Research Institute seeks to advance scientific, business-relevant knowledge in workplace, built environment, driving safety and disability. Research findings, published in open, peer reviewed literature, are shared with the worldwide health and safety community and are used to develop recommendations, guidelines, and interventions to help reduce injury and disability.