The quantitative and qualitative benefits of preventing workplace injuries are clear. Healthier, more productive employees. Lower costs, lower WC utilization.

A recent meta-analysis of more than 200 safety studies pointed to the conclusion that a company's safety climate is the strongest predictor of occupational accidents. Specifically, employees' perceptions of how committed management is to their safety significantly impacts the likelihood of workplace injuries.

The take-away: Management has a much broader and stronger role to play in preventing workplace injuries than just implementing and monitoring safety programs. Management must actively and regularly demonstrate its commitment to employee safety in ways that are actually recognized by the employees.

Understanding Safety Climate

The meta-analysis was led by Dr. Dov Zohar at Israel's Institute of Technology. Dr. Zohar also conducted the first study on workplace safety climate back in 1980. Dating from this first study, Dr. Zohar defines "safety climate" to mean the "socially-shared employee perceptions regarding managerial commitment to their safety and health."

In the 1980 study, Dr. Zohar identified certain managerial behaviors that employees perceived to show this commitment: high status afforded to safety officers; level of priority seen to be given to safety when making operational decisions; and consistent involvement of upper management in company safety activities.

The question then becomes what other actions can management take to signal to workers the value they place on creating and maintaining a safe workplace.

Cultural Drivers of Workplace Safety

A study conducted by Towers Watson-ISR outlined eight drivers of safety culture, and quantified the impact each had in reducing workplace accidents. The two cultural drivers found to have the greatest impact are all directly within management control:

• Communication: Safety incidents occurred only 25 percent as often in companies where employees felt management communicated clearly and fully with them, than in those where employees didn't feel this way. Note, this communication wasn't simply about safety. Employees in the high communication companies said they were kept well informed about such things as company values, how their work fits into overall company objectives, and what's expected of them as individual workers.

• Senior management participation in safety decisions: This finding harkens back to the details in Dr. Zohar's 1980 study. Transparency by senior management when making safety decisions increased employee confidence. By Towers-Watson's calculation, this resulted in a reduction of safety issues at 3.5 times the rate compared to companies with a more remote senior management.

Other cultural drivers identified by Towers-Watson provide further opportunities for management to express its commitment to employee safety and to gauge how well employees are receiving that message:

• Encouraging teamwork, which can result in mutual self-monitoring of employees in a cooperative setting

• Managing workloads in ways that exhibit the importance of safety relative to quantity

• Having supervisors who signal they value their team's safety by supporting workers who report unsafe conditions and provide safety training

"Perceived Organizational Support"

The International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics just published a study in January of 2015 that also emphasizes how critical employee perception of organizational commitment to safety is in preventing workplace injuries. Workers who perceived high levels of organizational support were found to be more committed to following safety practices and had lower accident rates.

None of the studies say that perception alone is sufficient to minimize accidents. Yet there's no denying the impact a positive perception of management safety engagement has on preventing workplace injuries.