Job Satisfaction as a Moderator of the Safety Leadership-Safety Performance Relationship in Nurses

Abstract

Despite organizations prioritizing safety, workplace accidents and injuries continue to occur. Thus, safety research has evaluated factors that influence employees’ workplace safety behaviors. The objective of this study was to examine job satisfaction as a moderator of the relationship between safety leadership and safety performance. The current study predicted that job satisfaction would strengthen the relationships between transformational leadership and safety performance but weaken the relationships between passive leadership and safety performance. This study dispersed surveys to 134 direct care nurses across the United States. Job satisfaction did not moderate any of the transformational safety leadership-safety performance relationships nor the passive safety leadership-safety performance and passive safety leadership-safety participation relationships. Interestingly, this study found that job satisfaction significantly weakened the relationship between passive safety leadership and safety compliance but only when job satisfaction was low. This suggested that significantly fewer safety compliance behaviors occurred when unsatisfied nurses had a leader who engaged in passive leadership behaviors. Because recent surveys have found that nurses’ job satisfaction has been declining, in combination with being required to complete more complex formal safety procedures since the outbreak of COVID-19, this finding is especially important for healthcare organizations as it places them at greater risk of poor retention rates, higher turnover, and reduced financial stability. This paper recommends that healthcare organizations target employee engagement in conjunction with leadership development initiatives to further enhance their impact on the organization.