Safety issues are frequently a problem in businesses, particularly those with significant safety hazards. In 2019, there were 5,333 occurrences involving workplace safety, the most in the past 12 years. The construction industry is the one with the most fatalities in this scenario. Other industries, on the other hand, are not immune to work-related accidents. As a result, numerous parties and circumstances must take into account workplace safety.
Individual and organizational variables both have a role in workplace safety. Individual aspects might include attitudes, knowledge, and abilities related to workplace safety. Culture, policies, leadership, and job characteristics are examples of organizational factors. In the context of leadership, leaders who are capable of carrying out their obligations will be able to encourage and instruct their subordinates, or in other words, serve as role models. A concept known as safety leadership (SL) emerged in the literature as a way for a leader to encourage workplace safety. SL, is the use of a leader’s influence to encourage followers to achieve organizational and individual safety goals. In order to offer a better understanding of SLliterature in the development of organizational research, it is required to study the concepts and implications of SL in greater depth.
There are various ideas about the definition of SL in each study. This diversity arises as a result of the diverse research contexts. SL is basically a process of interaction between leaders and followers. However, these interactions focus on the influence of the leader in encouraging followers to achieve goals and safe culture in business activities. In this case, leaders with SL are expected to be able to realize business activities in organizations that uphold work safety. One of the things leaders can do is to communicate regularly with their followers. The leader’s routine communication efforts were aimed at reducing the rate of work accidents and improving safety performance.
The literature review will be used in this study to have a better knowledge of SL. In addition, the literature evaluation for the SL concept encompasses the definition, consequences, and growth of the research setting. On the basis of this, an online database search for references in the form of past research was conducted.
In conducting reference searches, bibliometricsis used to visualize the relevance of SL with other topics. Therefore, VosViewer 1.6.16 software is used as a tool in bibliometrics, so that reference searches are easier to do. However, not all previous studies were used as a reference. There are certain criteria that must be met. The criteria include:
1. Is a scientific article;
2. Sourced from scientific journals;
3. It was published in 2017-2021; and
4. Its keywords is Safety Leadership
In order to conduct further studies on Safety Leadership, this research examines nine scientific articles published from 2017 to 2021. The nine scientific articles were successfully obtained after going through a selection process to determine the relevance of each scientific article that became a reference. Based on this, it can be seen that Safety Leadership is a new concept that previous studies have not specifically discussed.
Furthermore, the findings of this study indicate that there are various benefits that arise from Safety Leadership, such as attitudes, behaviors, and job outcomes on followers. In addition, Safety Leadership is also useful for reducing the rate of work accidents. Although various benefits have been found from Safety Leadership, no previous research has been found that discusses the triggering factors for Safety Leadership itself. With these findings, a conceptual framework can be formed that describes the relationship between Safety Leadership and its consequences. In addition, it is also known that there are various research contexts on Safety Leadership. However, no previous research has been found that discusses Safety Leadership in a multi-sector context. Thus, through literature review, it is hoped that further research can discuss Safety Leadership in a multi-sector context.
This research still needs to be refined, especially related to the triggering factors or antecedents of Safety Leadership in order to complement the existing framework. In addition to antecedents, further research can also conduct studies by referring to more and more diverse references so as to deepen understanding related to Safety Leadership.
Author: Anis Eliyana
Detailed information from this study can be viewed on our article at :
https://www.ijsmsjournal.org/ijsms-v5i2p110.html (Safety Leadership to Drive Workplace Safety : A Literature Review)
