Examining the influence of safety leadership towards safety behaviour in SME manufacturing

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between employer’s safety leadership with safety behaviour among Small Medium Enterprises manufacturing sector in
Negeri Sembilan. Three independent variables representing safety leadership attributes
namely safety motivation, safety concern and safety policy have been selected for this study.
Safety behaviour which is the dependent variable has been measured by two dimensions
namely safety compliance and safety participation. The employees from SME manufacturing companies in Negeri Sembilan have been selected as a target population. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed randomly to the Negeri Sembilan SME manufaturing workers
and only 210 sets were returned and usable. Correlation and Multiple Regression test were
used to analyse the data. Research findings revealed that safety concern and safety policy
were significant with safety compliance, with safety Policy (β=0.366, t=3.300, p=0.001) was
found to have the greatest influence; while safety motivation was not significant with safety compliance. On the other hands, safety motivation and safety concern were significant with safety participation with safety concern (β=0.376, t=2.701, p=0.007) was found to have the greatest influence; while safety policy has no influence towards safety participation. Safety concern is an important component of leadership in determining safety behaviour as it has been consistently explaining the variance in both dimensions of safety behaviour