Influence of Trust and Job Satisfaction on Safety Climate among Managers at a Large U.S. Air Carrier

Abstract

Safety climate is a measure of employee attitudes and opinions regarding safety and serves as a snapshot of theoverall safety culture within an organization. A review of the safety climate literature suggests that a relationshipexists between safety climate and its three component scales: coworker trust, supervisor trust, and job satisfaction.This article examines the influence of trust and job satisfaction on safety climate. A conceptual model was developedbased on the literature to test the direct effects of supervisor and coworker trust on job satisfaction, the direct effectof supervisor and coworker trust on safety climate, the direct effect of job satisfaction on safety climate, as well asthe indirect effect of supervisor and coworker trust on safety climate mediated by job satisfaction. The overall modelwas significant with coworker trust and supervisor trust significantly and directly associated with both jobsatisfaction and safety climate. Additionally the relationship between the two trust scales and safety climate wasfound to be partially mediated by job satisfaction. These results indicate that safety climate could be improved byimplementing programs that focus on coworker trust, supervisor trust, and job satisfaction. The methodology used inthis study may provide managers of similar organizations a model to measure the effectiveness and return oninvestment of actions taken to improve safety climate.