Influence of employee well-being on workplace injuries: A study of safety climate as a potential mediator

Being at work constitutes a considerable part of our lives and research on employee well-being and safety-related outcomes at the workplace can help to improve people’s work lives. This study examined the work-related employee well-being and individual workplace injuries relationship and how safety climate potentially mediates the association. The current research sets out to (1) examine the connection of employee well-being with workplace injuries, and the influence of safety climate on this relationship, and (2) assesses the level of employee well-being, safety climate and its association with injuries in a global city country in South East Asia, Singapore. This study adopted a cross-sectional design utilising self-reported data from 147 participants aged 21 to 69 with work experience ranging from 6 months to 37 years across various industries within the manufacturing sector. Results of the current study illustrate that when employee well-being increases, safety climate also increases. In addition, when employee well-being and safety climate improves, individual workplace injury reduces. Among employee well-being and safety climate dimensions, having meaning and positive emotions at work and management’s attitude, behaviour and actions profoundly influence injuries in the workplace. Long working hours negatively affect safety climate and workplace injuries. Age and experience have a small to medium effect on injuries at the workplace, with employees aged between 45-49 years old and those with work experience between 16-25 years reporting more injuries. Management staff reported better employee well-being and lower injuries, while shift workers indicated weaker safety climate. Respondents also indicated that approximately 50% of workplace injuries were unreported, but when employees display appropriate behaviour in reporting workplace injuries, they experience higher employee well-being and safety climate. Mediation analysis indicated that safety climate did act as a mediator between employee well-being and workplace injuries. The mediation model including four control variables age, tenure, hierarchy and work hours, accounted for approximately 20% of the variance in individual injuries at the workplace. Practically, utilising established employee well-being and safety climate construct, together with commonly available demographic variables, organisations can combat workplace injuries. Theoretically, this these findings from Singapore contribute to the literature of employee well-being from a positive psychology perspective and extend the safety climate literature in an Asian context. Moreover, this study suggests cross-cultural applicability for the relevant measures, having utilised a Hungarian employee well-being measure and a Norwegian safety climate instrument for an Asian sample. Overall, to tackle safety-related outcomes, employers must first take care of employee’s well-being at work and management-related factors towards safety perception