Communication’s Role in Safety Management and Performance of the Road Safety Practices

Workers’ road safety in organizations represents a major issue in countries like France, especially when considering the large number of vehicles used in displacements assigned by companies. Despite continuing efforts to reduce the number of crashes, every year thousands of workers found death in their workplaces and millions suffer occupational injuries and illnesses. The communication in organizations could play an important role to increase road safety. To better know its role, this study measured managers’ and employees’ perceptions about the communication’s role in six antecedents’ safety management and performance of road safety practice self-reported safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety compliance and safety participation, by conducting a survey using a questionnaire among 165 employees and 135 managers. The reliability and unidimensionality of all the items of scale used were found acceptable. Path analysis using AMOS-19 software showed that some of the safety management of road safety practices have effects associated with the safety performance determinants and components; namely, all the six antecedents' only safety training and safety promotion have effects related to safety motivation, and only safety commitment, safety communication and feedback have effects related to safety knowledge. Safety behavior compliance was found to be the key mediator in explaining these effects and relationships, and only safety feedback has effects related to safety participation. Safety feedback was identified as the most important safety management factor to road safety practices that predicts safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety compliance and safety participation. The results of this study will contribute to the related companies’ ability to assess the road safety indicators and will also be a contribution to the future development of safety performance management for road safety practices in companies.