Safety participation in the workplace: A multidimensional assessment tool (PROSAFE)

The importance of the concept of the workforce participation in safety management has been underlined by different studies in the Human Factors literature of the last twenty years. All these contributions have stressed the importance of considering the positive contribution of individuals and teams in achieving the desired level of safety. Within this framework, the construct of proactive safety orientation toward safety emerged as a general and broad set of psychological orientations by individuals in managing safety issues, preventing injuries, improving workplace safety conditions and sustainability of organizational contexts, beyond the mere avoidance of negative events for individuals, teams and organizations. In the light of these conceptual bases, the aim of the present research is to define an original assessment tool of "proactive safety orientation" to assess the psychological factors leading individuals toward a more proactive and participative approach to safety management and risk prevention in the workplace. The model tool was developed as a multidimensional questionnaire on existing conceptual dimensions of organizational proactivity adapted to safety issues in the workplace. In order to achieve this aim, three main research phases were planned: 1) Exploratory semi-structured interviews on conceptual issues, involving safety experts 2) Generation of a new set of assessment measures with content items interview with experts 3) Quantitative pilot study on the psychometric properties of reliability of the new evaluation instruments involving a new set of safety experts. In summary, our research allowed us to generate an assessment tool inclusive of six psychological dimensions supportive of a general proactive orientation by individuals toward the management of safety and the prevention of accidents in the workplace: i) participative self-efficacy; ii) influence perception; iii) psychological ownership; iv) felt responsibility; v) anticipation orientation; vi) improvement orientation..