Our Mission: Promoting positive organizational culture and climate to ensure safety, health, well-being, and respectful experiences for everyone in the workplace.
What are safety culture and safety climate?
Safety culture and safety climate are closely linked, yet distinct, phenomena in the workplace. Safety culture refers to beliefs about the importance of safety that drive company policies and influence workplace behaviors. Safety climate, on the other hand, refers to the opinions employees share about whether safety is truly prioritized by their company’s policies, procedures, and practices. In recent years, safety climate has gained attention as a key indicator of whether the prioritization of safety holds up against competing demands like productivity and deadlines. It offers a measurable snapshot of an organization’s safety culture at a particular point in time.
What does that mean?
Even when a company appears to prioritize safety through programs and protocols, it may still have a poor safety climate. Employees can tell if safety is deprioritized during moments of high pressure in favor of productivity or efficiency, and this reality is reflected in the safety climate. Risk managers can evaluate a company’s current safety climate by surveying employees about their leadership’s commitment to, and support for, safety. Our work has expanded this concept by enabling climate surveys to also capture how companies prioritize health, well-being, and respect.
Why is this important?
Safety climate serves as a key predictor of safety outcomes, like accidents, injuries, and safety behaviors. This is because it is the measurable aspect of an organization’s safety culture, which is the driving force behind safety-related policies, procedures, and practices.
What are the implications?
By monitoring safety climate, companies can proactively detect potential issues and make targeted improvements to their safety management systems—helping prevent accidents and strengthening their safety culture over time.
Team Members:
Dr. Frank Giordano is the Project Manager for Dr. Emily Huang’s Safety Climate Lab at the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences, with a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Kansas State University, and degrees from Kansas State (M.S.) and Manhattan College (B.S.). His work focuses on occupational safety and health, risk perception, and work arrangements, aiming to bridge the gap between science and practice through research-informed, actionable interventions that improve safety, health, and well-being.
Cassandra Chlevin is a Research Associate in Dr. Emily Huang’s Safety Climate Lab. She holds a B.S. in Psychology from Andrews University and an M.S. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Kansas State University, where she is also pursuing her Ph.D. in the same field. Her research focuses on scale development, occupational health psychology, well-being, and the dynamics of workplace stress. In particular, she explores how perceptions of coworkers influence the spread or mitigation of individual work-related stress.
Kali Kuhn is an Intern in Dr. Emily Huang’s Safety Climate Lab. She earned her B.S. in Psychology and Public Health Management & Policy from Oregon State University in Spring 2024. Her research interests center on improving mental health and overall well-being in the workplace by enhancing work environments and promoting safety through daily practices.
Dr. W. Kent Anger is a Professor Emeritus at OHSU and mentor to Dr. Emily Huang’s Safety Climate Lab. He has a PhD in Experimental Psychology with additional specialization in applied behavior analysis. He was a Scientist Director (captain rank) in the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service at NIOSH and Professor and Founding Director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center at OHSU. His focus for the Lab is in strategy and developing interventions that are effective with workforces that have limited through advanced education.
