Psychosocial Safety Climate: Development of the PSC-12

Psychosocial risks in the workplace have the potential for causing psychological and social harm that contributes toward the mental health disability burden. Psychosocial risks are influenced by macrolevel factors such as the psychosocial safety climate within the organization. This paper concerns the development and evaluation of a short instrument to measure psychosocial safety climate (PSC). PSC is conceived as an up-stream resource, and concerns senior management values and attitudes toward care and practices in relation to employee psychosocial well being. In a pilot sample (N = 78) we used an iterative procedure incorporating regression analysis to reduce 26 items down to a parsimonious 12 item, four-factor scale (PSC-12). The PSC-12 was then assessed using confirmatory factor analysis and the scale validated in a second representative sample of Australian workers (N = 398). The PSC-12 showed expected relationships with psychosocial risk factors (e.g., job demands, job resources), worker engagement and health, and work related outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction). We further confirmed the invariance of the factor coefficients and factor covariance across the two multioccupational samples using multigroup analysis. In a third organizational study (N = 16 teams, 106 health care workers) we found that PSC showed group like psychometric properties, and team level PSC was associated with individual level psychological distress and work engagement. PSC showed incremental value beyond a physical safety measure. The results provide initial indications that the PSC-12 can be used across a range of occupations, and within organizations.