Promoting employee safety performance in the Chinese construction industry

In the construction industry, safety leadership has been widely recognised as an indispensable factor that affects organisational safety performance. However, in China specifically, research on safety leadership in the construction domain is not adequately developed. Relatively little empirical research has taken safety leadership to be a multidimensional variable that needs to be studied in order to understand how the different dimensions affect safety behaviour. Accordingly, this study identifies five safety leadership practices and establishes hypotheses to examine the role of organisational leadership in promoting safety performance, as moderated by safety climate. The study adopts a quantitative research approach through a questionnaire survey with 106 construction professionals leading or participating in safety management work in the Chinese construction sectors. The results show that exerting certain leadership strategies that encourage construction stakeholders to comply with safety practices will improve safety performance. Five safety practices that leaders can execute to ameliorate safety performance are discussed. At a moment when the whole industry is suffering from momentous safety challenges, transformation is required; these findings are intended to guide construction managers in their commitment to project safety management. The study proposes measures to enhance safety performance through top-down organisational health and safety (OHS) practices.