Influence of safety climate on safety performance: the mediating effect of safety knowledge

Organizational safety performance plays a crucial role in accident prevention programmes in the workplace and safety records. Previous studies have revealed that employees’ attitude and behaviour are the main components to improve safety practices. Employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities related to occupational safety at the workplace need to be enhanced for safety performance outcomes. Hence, the aim
of this study is to examine the mediating effect of safety knowledge on the relationship between the climate and commitment towards safety performance. In this study, selfadministered questionnaires involving 440 employees from the Malaysian energy industry were distributed. The data was analyzed using the Partial Least Squares Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that there is a positive significant relationship between safety climate, safety commitment, and safety performance. This study will also highlight the effects of safety knowledge mediation that is able to show a positive significant result due to safety knowledge being an important element to manage occupational safety in the Malaysian energy industry. Thus, safety knowledge
needs to be given more priority in order to heighten safety performance among the employees in the energy industry. Furthermore, safety commitment also gives a positive
significant result. This shows that safety commitment requires a new safety management system to develop quality human capital in the energy industry. This study also shows that the management and the employees of the energy industry need to
understand the occupational safety concepts and safety strategies as well as to give a full commitment to occupational safety and health issues. For future study, the role of safety knowledge among the employees needs to be focused in order to enhance safety performance in the Malaysian energy industry.