How Does Safety Stack Up? A Survey of Corporate Financial Decision Makers' Perceptions of Safety Performance, Programs And Personnel

SH&E PROFESSIONALS have a vested interest in knowing more about top-level management—most of whom determine what resources are designated for safety within organizations. By knowing more about these managers' perceptions of safety, an SH&E professional may be better equipped to negotiate for valued resources. For example, suppose you know that top-level managers within your industry think that good safety performance is primarily the result of industry-level enforcement of high safety standards or perhaps the result of proactive safety programs. Would such information help you prepare a more persuasive argument for funding safety programs or personnel? This article aims to review top-level managers' perceptions of their companies' safety performance, programs and personnel in an effort to give safety professionals a competitive edge in resource negotiation. The article also explores the reasoning behind these perceptions in order to help identify best practices or potential strategies for improving occupational safety. The Critical Role of Top Managers Managers play critical roles in organizational functions and their outcomes (Avolio, Sosik, Jung et al., 2003). Occupational safety research also shows that management's level of commitment to safety is associated with safety outcomes (Barling, Loughlin & Kelloway, 2002; Marsh, Davies, Phillips et al., 1998; Zohar, 2002). However, much of this research has focused only on lower-level management. For example, Barling, et al (2002) and Zohar (2002) documented relationships between the characteristics of front-line supervisors, safety climate (unit-level) and safety outcomes. Only a limited amount of safety research has investigated the possible influence of higherlevel management on occupational safety. For example, Rundmo & Hale (2003) explored the effects of higher-level managers' safety attitudes on their safety behaviors. These researchers concluded that safety attitudes can be important factors for the formation of managers' behavioral intentions as well as actual behavior. One would expect that this behavior could then affect the safety attitudes and behaviors of other employees. The survey described here focuses on top-level management and attempts to advance the understanding of their opinions of safety and reasons for forming these opinions. The research team focused specifically on those managers who are responsible for making decisions about property and casualty risk management or insurance-related services. These individuals likely make decisions about highlevel budgets, resource allocations and corporate priorities, so arguably they have the most authority for making financial decisions related to safety. In this context, these individuals as referred to as corporate financial decision makers. Methods Participants & Procedures Telephone surveys were performed to explore the research questions. The goal was to collect data from 200 medium-size companies (more than 100 to less than 2,000 employees) and 200 large-size companies (more than 2,000 employees). Data were collected in two stages. During the first stage, 4,000 randomly selected phone numbers from the continental U.S. were obtained from a vendor from a database commonly used by researchers to However, much of this research has focused only on lower-level management. For example, Barling, et al (2002) and Zohar (2002) documented relationships between the characteristics of front-line supervisors, safety climate (unit-level) and safety outcomes. .