Huang, Supervisor vs. Employee Safety Perceptions and Association With Future Injury 2012

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Accident Analysis and Prevention 47 (2012) 45–51

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Accident Analysis and Prevention

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Supervisor vs. employee safety perceptions and association with future injury in

US limited-service restaurant workers

Yueng-Hsiang Huang a,∗, Santosh K. Verma b,d,e, Wen-Ruey Chang c, Theodore K. Courtney b,d,David A. Lombardib,d, Melanye J. Brennan b, Melissa J. Perry d,f

a Center for Behavioral Sciences, Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA,USAb Center for Injury Epidemiology, Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA,USAc Center for Physical Ergonomics, Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA,USAd Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of PublicHealth, Boston, MA,USAe Department of Family Medicine and CommunityHealth, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester,MA, USAf Department of Environmental andOccupational Health, GeorgeWashington University, School of PublicHealth andHealth Services,Washington, DC,USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 26 April 2011

Received in revised form

15 September 2011

Accepted 23 November 2011

Keywords:

Management commitment to safety

Future injury

Supervisor safety perception

Restaurant workers

a b s t r a c t

Objectives: Many studies have found management commitment to safety to be an important construct

of safety climate. This study examined the association between supervisor and employee (shared and

individual) perceptions of management commitment to safety and the rate of future injuries in limited-

service restaurant workers.

Methods: A total of 453 participants (34 supervisors/managers and 419 employees) from 34 limited-

service restaurants participated in a prospective cohort study. Employees’ and managers’ perceptions of

management commitment to safety and demographic variables were collected at the baseline. The survey

questions were made available in three languages: English, Spanish, and Portuguese. For the following

12 weeks, participants reported their injury experience and weekly work hours. A multivariate nega-

tive binomial generalized estimating equation model with compound symmetry covariance structure

was used to assess the association between the rate of self-reported injuries and measures of safety

perceptions.Results: There were no significant relationships between supervisor and either individual or shared

employee perceptions of management commitment to safety. Only individual employee perceptions

were significantly associated with future employee injury experience but not supervisor safety percep-

tions or shared employee perceptions.

Conclusion: Individual employee perception of management commitment to safety is a sig-

nificant predictor for future injuries in restaurant environments. A study focusing on

employee perceptions would be more predictive of injury outcomes than supervisor/manager

perceptions.

© 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Restaurants are one of the largest employers in the United

States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), restaurants

employed approximately 9.7 million workers, which represented

about 6.4% of the total U.S. workforce in 2007 (Bureau of Labor

Statistics, 2007). The BLS also projects that the number of food

preparation and service workers will increase by 396,000 over

∗ Corresponding author at: Liberty Mutual Research Institutefor Safety, 71 Fran-

kland Road, Hopkinton, MA 01748,USA. Tel.: +1 508497 0208;

fax: +1 508435 0482.

E-mail address: [email protected] (Y.H. Huang).

the 10-year period from 2008 to 2018. This is the fourth largest

projected increase in the number of workers among occupational

categories.

BLS data ranks the restaurant industry third in total count of

injuries and illnesses for industries with 100,000 or more nonfa-

tal cases (after schools and hospitals) (Bureau of Labor Statistics,

2008). The California Workers’ Compensation Institute reported

that restaurant workers accounted for 6.1% of all California job

injury claims from 2000 to 2008.Total medical andindemnity ben-

efit payments on these claims in California amounted to just under

$1.1 billion forthe 8-year span (Young, 2010). These statistics illus-

trate the continuing need to identify ways to reduce workplace

accidents and injuries and to improve overall workplace safety for

restaurant workers.

0001-4575/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.aap.2011.11.023

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46 Y.H.Huang et al./ Accident Analysis and Prevention 47 (2012) 45–51

1.1. Employee perceptions of management commitment to safety

Safety climate is an organizational factor commonly cited as

an important antecedent of safety in the workplace. Safety cli-

mate refers to the workers’ shared perception of the organization’s

policies, procedures, and practices as they relate to the value and

importance of safety within the organization (e.g., Zohar, 1980,

2000, 2002, 2003; Griffin and Neal, 2000). As Zohar suggested,

safety climate is a construct that reflects the true priority of safety

within an organization (Zohar, 2000).

The dimension that has been included most often is employee

perception of management commitment to safety. This factor has

been described in terms of management concern for employee

well-being (Brown and Holmes, 1986) and management attitudes

toward safety (Zohar, 1980, 2000; Dedobbeleer and Beland, 1991;

Niskanen, 1994). Other studies characterize management commit-

ment to safety in terms of whether workers perceive that safety is

important to management (Diaz and Cabrera, 1997; Gershon et al.,

2000). Based on theoretical and statistical considerations, Zohar

and Luria (2005) promoted a global factor relating to management

commitment when measuring safety climate. In 2008, Zohar con-

cluded thatthe core meaning of safety climate concerns managerial

commitment, with all other variables that have been associated

with this construct assuming a secondary role both theoretically

and empirically (Flin et al., 2000; Griffin and Neal, 2000; Zohar and

Luria, 2005; Neal and Griffin, 2006). Although prior research has

examined different dimensions of safety climate (e.g., Donald and

Canter, 1994; Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996, 1998; Siu et al., 2004),

consensus on dimensions other than management commitment to

safety is still lacking.

From the literature, safety climate has been differentiated

into two levels, shared-group level safety climate and individual-

psychological safety climate (Christian et al., 2009). Summarizing

from the literature (e.g., James et al., 1978; James and Sells,

1981; Jermier et al., 1989), Christian et al. defined psychological

safety climate as individual perceptions of safety-related poli-

cies, practices, and procedures pertaining to safety matters that

affect personal well-being at work. Group-level safety climateis defined as shared perceptions of the work environment and

characteristics as they pertain to safety matters that affect a

group of individuals (e.g., Griffin and Neal, 2000; Zohar and Luria,

2005). This study first examined whether employee perceptions

of management commitment to safety, the key dimension of safety

climate, were shared among employees working for the same

restaurant.

A recentliterature searchfoundthat none of thepriorstudies on

safety climate specifically applied to the restaurant industry. The

current study extends the literature by exploring and examining,

specific to the restaurant industry, the important safety climate

construct of employee perceptions of management commitment to

safety.

1.2. Supervisor vs. employee safety perceptions and injury

outcome

Workers usually develop theirindividual safety perceptions and

expectations by looking to the actions and safety perceptions of

their supervisors to determine the prioritization and importance

of safety(Zohar, 2000). These perceptions and expectations predict

employees’ motivation to work safely, which affects employees’

safety behaviors and subsequent injury outcomes (Hofmann and

Stetzer, 1996; Mueller et al., 1999; Griffin and Neal, 2000; Zohar,

2002, 2003; Huang et al., 2003). From this line of thought, super-

visors and employees might have similar safety perceptions of the

workplace, since they work in the same organization. On the other

hand, supervisors, especially in the restaurant environment, are

usually the ones who implementsafety polices and procedures, and

conduct safetytrainingfor employees. Employeesare theones who

receive the training and they observe how supervisors implement

these polices and procedures. It is possible that there is a gap or

inconsistency with regard to safety perceptions between the per-

son who implements the safety policies, procedures or programs

andtheonewho receivestheseprogramsandobservestheseimple-

mentations. For example, Gittleman et al.(2010)showedthat safety

climate perceptions differed by job level with management per-

ceiving a more positive safety climate compared to workers. Prior

studies of multi-source feedback and performance ratings fromdif-

ferent sources have also consistently shown discrepancies among

different groups of raters (e.g., supervisors, subordinates) (Mount,

1984; Harris and Schaubroeck, 1988; Borman, 1997; Conway and

Huffcutt, 1997). These differences may derive from varying per-

spectives on performance and/or opportunities to observe actual

performance (Lawler, 1967). Therefore, the safety perceptions of

supervisors and their employees might be different for the same

restaurant. This study extends the traditional safety climate liter-

ature, which usually focuses on only employees’ perceptions, and

explores the safety perceptions of supervisors vs. their employees

at the same restaurant.

Purpose 1: To explore whether supervisors’ perceptions of

management commitment to safety are related to employees’ per-

ceptions.

From safety climate literature, it has been widely shown that

both individual and shared employee safety climate perceptions

can predict employee safety outcomes, such as safety compli-

ance, safetyparticipation, injuryand accident rates (Christian et al.,

2009). The results of prior studies are mainly based on employees’

perceptions, not the management team’s perceptions. It is sug-

gested, in the performance feedback literature, that in order to

gain a more accurate and in-depth understanding of the safety

status in an organization, feedback should be gathered from mul-

tiple sources (e.g., workers, supervisors, and senior management)

(Borman, 1997; Law et al., 2011). It is assumed that multi-source

feedback provides unique information from different perspec-

tives, adding incremental validity to performance evaluation. Thisstudy extends the safety climate literature by examining/exploring

whether supervisors’ perceptions of management commitment to

safety can predict employee safety outcomes.

Purpose 2: To examine whether both supervisor and employee

perceptionsof management commitment to safety can predict future

employee injury experience.

2. Methods

2.1. Survey participants

Several approaches were used to recruit the restaurants for this

study. These included approaching chains, stores or franchiseesthat had previously been receptive to research studies by the

investigative team members, approaching restaurant trade asso-

ciations, direct solicitation of stores or franchisees, and outreach

via the loss control department of a large worker’s compensa-

tion insurance company. Thirty-four limited service restaurants

located in six U.S. states, belonging to three major chains agreed to

participate.

A prospective cohort study was conducted via survey in each of

the 34 restaurants. The final dataset for the current study included

34 supervisors/managers and 419 employees representing 50% of

the total employees in these restaurants. The response rate for

supervisors was 100%. Only two employees declined to partici-

pate in the project (at the time baseline surveys were conducted)

indicating a response rate of 99.6% for employee surveys.


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Y.H. Huang et al./ Accident Analysis andPrevention47 (2012) 45–51 47

2.2. Procedures

Baseline survey data were collected from both supervisors and

employeesat the restaurants. After completing the baseline survey,

employeeswere askedto reportweekly,for thefollowing 12weeks,

their injury experience and the number of hours they worked dur-

ingthe previous week. Participantswere given a choiceof reporting

their weeklyexperience by (1) telephone using an interactive voice

response (IVR) system; (2) an internet-based survey; or (3) filling

out written survey forms. The study was part of a larger research

project on restaurant safety and was approved by the appropriate

Institutional ReviewBoards.Detailsof the procedurewere provided

in Verma et al. (2010).

2.3. Measures

2.3.1. Demographic variables

Demographic variables included in the current study were gen-

der, ethnic background, age, education level, job tenure, which

restaurant chain the employee works for, and number of work

hours per week.

2.3.2. Management commitment to safety

Four survey items adapted from Zohar and Luria (2005) and

Huang et al. (2007) were used to measure the factor of employee

perceptions of management commitment to safety. An example is,

“The management team emphasizes safe behavior above all other

activities.” Each item used a 5-point Likert scale. Survey data were

collected at baseline. The survey materials were made available

in three languages: English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Translation,

back-translation, and check of meaning consistency among lan-

guages, were used when developing the Spanish and Portuguese

survey versions. The Internal Consistency Reliability Coefficient

(Alpha) for the four items was 0.81.

2.3.3. Future injury rate

Every week for the 12 weeks following the baseline survey,

employees reported their injury experience and the number of hours workedduring thepreviousweek byitems“How many hours

did you work in the restaurant in the last week?” and “In the last

week, didyou getinjured while at work?”The overall injuryratefor

the12 weeks was calculated as the total number of injuries divided

by total number of hours worked.

2.4. Data analysis procedure

2.4.1. Homogeneity tests of shared employee perceptions of

management commitment to safety

Homogeneity testswere examinedby calculating IntraclassCor-

relation Coefficient 1 and 2 (ICC1, ICC2) and RwgJ (Bartko, 1976;

James et al., 1984, 1993; Bliese, 2000) to check whether employees’

perceptions at the same restaurant (within-group) were consistentand had agreement. The criteria to determine consensus were as

follows:

(1) ICC1: The ICC1 indicates the extent to which individuals within

the same organization assign the same psychological meaning

to, or agree in their perceptions of, an organizational char-

acteristic (Ostroff and Schmitt, 1993). There are no definitive

guidelines on acceptable ICC1 values. In past research, ICC1 val-

ues have ranged from 0 to 0.50, with a median of 0.12 ( James,

1982).

(2) ICC2: The ICC2 assesses the relative status of between and

within variability using the average ratings of respondents

within each unit (Bartko, 1976). It indicates reliability at the

aggregatelevel,or the reliability of means (Ostroff and Schmitt,

1993). There is no strictstandardof acceptability of ICC2 values.

Glick (1985) recommended an ICC2 cutoff of 0.60. Schneider

et al. (1998) suggested that a moderate value of ICC2 coupled

with an acceptable Rwg score is sufficient grounds for aggrega-

tion. The average ICC2 value for their study was 0.47. LeBreton

and Senter (2008) suggested that, depending on the quality of

the measures beingused in the multi-level analysis,researchers

will probably want to choose values between 0.70 and 0.85 to

justify aggregation.

(3) RwgJ: The RwgJ is an assessment of within-group interrater

agreement ( James et al., 1993). A median of RwgJ larger than

0.70 was used as the criteria.

2.4.2. Multi-level analyses

Restaurants recruited in the study were clustered within chains

and workers were clustered within restaurants. Multi-level anal-

yses were conducted to examine the relationships. To account for

clustering of participants within restaurants, a multivariate neg-

ative binomial generalized estimating equation (GEE) model with

compound symmetry covariance structure (Liang and Zeger, 1986;

Zeger and Liang, 1986) was used to assess the association between

the rate of self-reported injuries, and measures of safety percep-

tion. Supervisor perceptions were level 2 (group level) variables,employee shared perceptions within the same restaurant were

level 2 (group level) variables, and individual employee percep-

tions were level 1 (individual level) variables. As there were only

three chains, two dummy variables for chains were included in the

regression model to account for clustering of restaurants within

chains. Factors not statistically significant at the 0.05 level in the

univariate model were not included in the multivariate model. All

statistical analyses were conducted using the SAS system version

9.1 (SAS Institute, Inc., Cary, NC).

3. Results

Table 1 displays detailed information about the demographic

characteristics of the participating employees and supervisors. Insummary, 65.4% of the 419 participating employees were female;

53.9%classified themselves asWhite, 21% asBlack, and15.5% asHis-

panic. Of the survey versions, 89.5% of the participants chose the

English, 7.64% the Spanish, and 2.86% the Portuguese. The mean

age of employees was 29.8 years (range 15–78 years), 34.8% had

not completed high school while 40.6% were high school gradu-

ates. Participants averaged 32.8 work hours per week andhad been

working at the same restaurant for about 33 months. Among 34

supervisors/managers, 67.6% were female; 79.4% classified them-

selves as White, 11.8% as Black, and 2.9%as Hispanic. The mean age

of supervisors/managers was 38.4 years (range 20–57 years), 35.3%

were high school graduates and another 61.8% attended some col-

lege or above. They averaged 49.2 work hours per week and had

been working at the same restaurants for about 50 months.The average injury rate for employees in the 12 weeks follow-

ing completion of the initial survey was 5.8 injuries per 2000 work

hours (one full-time equivalent). Burns, cuts, and contusions were

typical. Correlations between study variables from employee sur-

veys are provided in Table 2.

Were employee perceptions of management commitment to

safety shared among employees working for the same restau-

rant? Results of homogeneity tests showed that ICC1 was 0.097,

ICC2 was 0.59, and median of RwgJ as 0.78. According to Glick

(1985) and Schneider et al. (1998), the results of these homogeneity

tests may provide sufficient grounds for aggregation. As discussed

earlier, LeBreton and Senter (2008) suggested that researchers

will probably want to choose values between 0.70 and 0.85 for

ICC2 to justify aggregation. Since there is no strict standard of


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48 Y.H.Huang et al./ Accident Analysis and Prevention 47 (2012) 45–51

Table 1

Descriptive information of respondents.

Employees Supervisors

Job title

Crew member 170 (40.6%)

Cashier 58 (13.8%)

Cook 15 (3.6%)

Others 176 (42.0%)

Total participants 419 34

GenderMale 145 (34.6%) 11 (32.4%)

Female 274 (65.4%) 23 (67.6%)


Ethnic background

White 226 (53.9%) 27 (79.4%)

Hispanic 65 (15.5%) 1 (2.9%)

Black 88 (21.0%) 4 (11.8%)

Other 40 (9.6%) 2 (5.9%)


Education level

Never a ttended s chool 4 (1.0%)

Grade 1–11 146 (34.9%) 1 (2.9%)

High school graduate 170 (40.7%) 12 (35.3%)

Some college or above 98 (23.4%) 21 (61.8%)

Total participants 418 (missing 1) 34

Survey version chosen

English 375 (89.50%) 34 (100%)

Spanish 32 (7.64%)

Portuguese 12 (2.86%)

Total participants 419

Age group

16–19 108 (26.2%) 0

20–24 87 (21.1%) 3 (8.8%)

25–34 89 (21.6%) 9 (26.5%)

35–44 57 (13.8%) 12 (35.3%)

45–54 48 (11.7%) 8 (23.5%)

55–64 16 (3.9%) 2 (5.9%)

65 and older 7 (1.7%) 0

Total participants 412 (missing 7) 34

acceptability of ICC2 values, the mean scores of management com-

mitment to safety were first calculated for each restaurant to

represent the shared perception for multi-level analyses (as a level2, group level variable) for further analyses.

Regarding Purpose 1: Analyses were conducted to exam-

ine the question “Do supervisors and employees have similar

safety perceptions?” Although the mean score of employee per-

ception of management commitment to safety (mean=4.0;SD=0.94;

n= 419) and the mean score of supervisor perception (mean = 4.11;

SD=0.64; n= 34) were similar, results showed no significant cor-

relation between supervisor perceptions and employee shared

perceptions (r =0.17; p> 0.05; n= 34). Furthermore, results from

multi-level analyses, as illustrated in Table 3, showed that

there were no significant relationships between supervisors’ and

employees’ individual perceptions of management commitment to

safety.

Table 3

Relationship between supervisors’ and individual employees’ perceptions of man-

agement commitment to safety.

Relative

risk

Standard

error

p-Value

DV: Individual employee perception of management commitment to safety

IV: Supervisor perception of

management commitment to safety

−0.1036 0.095 0.284

Note. n= 34 for supervisors.n= 419 foremployees.

RegardingPurpose 2: Data were analyzed to answer the ques-

tionsof whether supervisorsafety perceptions andemployeesafety

perceptions predicted future employee injury experience. Results

from the univariate analyses in Table 4 showed that the supervi-

sors’ safety perceptions were not a significant predictor of future

employee injury rates. Employee shared perceptions of manage-

ment commitment to safety were also not a significant predictor.

Only employee individual perceptions of managementcommitment

to safety were significantly associated with the rate of injury.

We further investigated whether individual employee percep-

tions of management commitment to safety could predict future

injury outcomes when controlled for demographic variables. Age,

general weekly work hours (as these two variables were corre-lated to future injury outcome in Table 2) and restaurant chain

(three restaurant chains were represented by twodummy vectors)

were entered in the equation as control variables. Table 5 results

show that individual employee perceptions of management com-

mitment to safety was still a significant predictor of future injury

rate after controlling for these demographic variables (Table 5);

the rate ratios were very similar to those found in the univariate

analyses. For each one point increase in employee perceptions of

management commitment to safety, the rate of injurydecreased 23%

(95% CI 0.59, 0.99).

4. Discussion

The current study examined, in the restaurant environment,an important construct emerging from the safety climate liter-

ature of employee perceptions of management commitment to

safety. Results showed that there were no significant relation-

ships between supervisors’ and employees’ perceptions. Individual

employee perception of management commitment to safety was a

significant predictor of future injury for restaurant workers, but

not supervisor safety perceptions or shared employee perceptions.

Interestingly, our results showed that there were no significant

relationships between supervisors’ and employees’ perceptions of

management commitment to safety even within the same restau-

rant. These results were consistent with studies in the literature

of multi-source feedback and performance ratings from different

sources where there were discrepancies among different groups

Table 2

Intercorrelations among study variables from employee surveys.

Variables 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. Gender −0.07 −0.07 −0.11* 0.08 0.13** 0.06 −0.02

2. Age – 0.20** 0.50** 0.15** 0.19** 0.01 −0.19**

3. Education – 0.05 0.07 0.26** −0.03 −0.05

4. Tenure – 0.06 0.04 0.06 −0.07

5. Work days per week – 0.54** 0.07 −0.07

6. Weekly work hours – 0.06 −0.11*

7. Perceived management commitment to safety – −0.11*

8. Injury rate in the following 12 weeks –

Male was coded as 1 and female was coded as 0. Injury rate was calculated as injury frequency controlled by work hours in the following 12 weeks after completing the

surveys.* Correlation is significant at alpha < 0.05, two-tailed.

**

Correlation is significant at alpha < 0.01, two-tailed.


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Table 4

Univariate analyses of the impacts of safety perceptions on injury outcomes.

Number of participants Relative risk 95% CI p-Value

DV: Injuryrate – Employee injuryexperience in thefollowing 12 weeks (controlled for work hours)

Analysis 1

IV: Supervisor perception of management commitment to safety 34 1.38 0.87 2.19 0.17

Analysis 2

IV: Individual employee perception of management commitment to safety 419 0.75* 0.58 0.96 0.02

Analysis 3

IV: Shared employee perception of management commitment to safety 34 0.71 0.37 1.38 0.32* p< 0.05.

Table 5

Multivariate analyses of whether individual employee perceptions of management commitment to safety predict future injury outcomes above and beyond demographic

variables.

Number of participants Relative risk 95% CI p-Value

DV: Injuryrate – Employee injuryfrequency in thefollowing 12 weeks control forwork hours for the12 weeks

IV:

Age 419 0.57** 0.44 0.75 0.00

Weekly work hours 419 0.91 0.80 1.05 0.19

Chain 1 vs. 2 419 0.86 0.42 1.79 0.69

Chain 1 vs. 3 419 1.06 0.56 2.00 0.86

Individual employee perception of management commitment to safety 419 0.77* 0.59 0.99 0.04

*

p< 0.05.** p< 0.01.

of raters (e.g., supervisors, subordinates) (Harris and Schaubroeck,

1988; Borman, 1997; Conway and Huffcutt, 1997). As suggested

in the literature, these differences may be attributed to vary-

ing perspectives on and opportunities to observe performance

(Lawler, 1967). Perhaps the safety perceptions were not consis-

tent between restaurant supervisors and employees because they

may have had different opportunities to observe the safety of

the restaurant as well as varying views on safety performance.

Future qualitative research can further investigate potential expla-

nations for these types of discrepancies. Another possible reason

for this lack of consistency may be due to the study limitation that

we did not use separate scales to distinguish between differentlevels of restaurant management (i.e. supervisor level and corpo-

rate level). Zohar (2008) proposed that safety climate should be a

multi-level construct: an extension into a multi-level framework

that identifies organization-level and group-level safety climates

as distinct constructs with separate measurement scales. As with

most of the prior studies in the safety climate literature, separate

scales were not used in the current study when measuring the

factor of management commitment to safety for different levels of

the management team. There is a possibility that the supervisors

might have considered the senior-level managers of the restau-

rant chain as the “managers” when answering the survey, and the

employees might consider their direct supervisors as the “man-

agers.” In this case, supervisors and employees may have used

different points of reference when they responded to the surveyitems. Future studies can reduce the potential conceptual ambi-

guity for the participants by using separate scales to measure

safety commitment of senior management and those of individual

supervisors.

“Can supervisors’ safety perceptions and employees’ safety

perceptions of management commitment to safety predict future

employee injury experience?” The results showed that only indi-

vidual employee safety perceptions were predictors of employee

future injury experience (but not shared employee safety per-

ceptions or supervisor safety perceptions). From the performance

feedback literature, it is assumed that different rating sources

provide unique information from different perspectives, adding

incremental validity to performance assessment over the individ-

ualsources (Borman, 1997; Lawet al., 2011). However, in ourstudy

for the restaurant environment, even though it is consistent with

the literaturethat supervisors haddifferentsafety perceptionsfrom

employees, their perceptions did not link to future injury rates at

the restaurant. This suggests that, when investigating the safety of

restaurants, it would be more useful to measure the perceptions of

employees rather than those of the supervisors.

This result is consistent with the traditional safety climate lit-

erature which usually focuses on employees’ perceptions rather

than managers’ perceptions. Future studies can further exam-

ine whether supervisors’ perceptions are linked to other types

of safety outcomes (e.g., safety behaviors, safety compliance)

and whether they can provide any incremental validity to safetyperformance assessmentin additionto employees’perceptions.Lit-

erature pertaining to multi-source ratings has shown that leaders

who received low ratings from others, but overrated themselves,

reported stronger motivation to change (Atwater and Brett, 2005).

Applying the concept from this line of thought, future research can

further explore whether this result that only individual employees’

perceptions on safety (not the managers/supervisors’) can predict

safety outcomes, can provide useful feedback to motivate super-

visors/managers to more objectively evaluate the safety status of

their companies.

Based on commonly acceptable criteria (Glick, 1985; Schneider

et al., 1998), even through the ICC2 score was moderate in the cur-

rent study, the results of the homogeneity tests provided sufficient

grounds for aggregation. It could, therefore, be reported that therewas a shared perception of management commitment to safety for

restaurant employees. However, the finding of a non-significant

relationship between group level safety perception and injury was

a result that is contradictory to the safety climate literature (e.g.,

Christian et al., 2009). We do not know, without further investiga-

tion, whether or not the specific characteristics of the restaurant

industry (e.g., high turnover rate, generally not a career job) had

an impact on group level safety climate. Also, the restaurants par-

ticipating in the study belonged to three large chains and may,

in general, have had good safety climate levels and, therefore,

smaller variances between restaurants to be linked to injury expe-

rience. In addition, there were only 34 groups (restaurants) and

self-reports of injury may have introduced non-differential mis-

classification. These factors may have had an impact on why no


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Documents

Huang, Supervisor vs. Employee Safety Perceptions and Association With Future Injury 2012