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 the overall safety culture within an organization. A review of the safety climate literature suggests that a relationship exists between safety climate (outcome) and its three component scales: coworker trust, supervisor trust, and job satisfaction. A regression-based path analysis was conducted on a sample of managers from a large U.S. air carrier to determine whether coworker trust and supervisor trust were effective means of predicting job satisfaction and safety climate at that organization. Coworker trust and supervisor trust were found to be significantly and directly associated with both job satisfaction and safety climate. Additionally, the relationship between the two trust scales and safety climate was found to be partially mediated by job satisfaction. These results indicate that safety climate, and safety culture, could be improved by implementing programs that focus on coworker trust, supervisor trust, and/or job satisfaction.