Testing a Model of Employee Willingness to Raise Safety Issues

Increasing attention has been given to the examination of contextual factors that enhance health and safety in the workplace (Griffin & Neal, 2000; Mullen, 2003). Several forms of contextual factors that enhance occupational safety include participating in safety meetings, encouraging the safety of others and safe work practices. Employee willingness to identify safety issues in the workplace is one contextual factor in particular that has received very little attention from researchers. This issue is an important and potentially severe oversight because safety programs often rely on workers' participation and willingness to identify safety concerns (Montgomery & Kelloway, 2001). Relatively few studies, however, have examined the mechanisms through which organizational factors influence the communication of safety-related issues (e.g., Zohar, 1980; 2000), particularly, employees' willingness to raise safety concerns.

The discretionary and voluntary behaviour of raising safety issues has significant advantages for organizations. The activity of bringing safety issues to the attention of management before they escalate into an accident can reduce the resulting social and economic costs, such as injuries, poor employee morale, and lost productivity (Barling, Kelloway, & Iverson, in press; Barling, Loughlin, & Kelloway, 2002). Increased awareness of safety issues in the workplace allows for preventative and/or corrective action to be implemented before a safety issue evolves into costly o...

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