Enhancing Safety Performance via Safety-Specific Transformational Leadership

The importance of transformational leadership has been touted in the business and organizational literature as transformational leadership affects employee attitudes, work-related outcomes, trust in management, organizational commitment, work performance and satisfaction with leadership (Avolio & Bass, 2002 & Barling, Loughlin & Kelloway, 2002). More importantly for the safety and health professional, the application of safety-specific transformational leadership tactics and strategies provides an opportunity to enhance safety climate, occupational safety and health performance and occupational injury outcomes. This paper presents an overview of transformational leadership, safety-specific transformational leadership tactics and strategies, and highlights the relationship between safety-specific transformational leadership and safety climate, occupational safety performance and outcomes. This information is of practical importance to the field of occupational safety as it provides direction for interventions and strategies that can be incorporated into an organization's efforts to manage occupational safety and health.