Leading safety beyond compliance : A study on leadership, safety culture and employee engagement in industrial operations

Sammanfattning

Industrial organizations involve high-risk work environments, this makes safety a central concern and further making safety culture an increasingly important issue for organizations. The importance of leadership, psychological safety, and employee engagement is increasingly emphasized in research on the development of safety culture. Therefore, this study examines how leaders describe their leadership within the context of safety culture and employee engagement within the context of an industrial organization. The study also aims to investigate potential leading indicators and practical recommendations for strengthening safety culture and employee engagement. The findings show that safety culture is understood differently depending on the organizational level, with the focus shifting from strategy to coordination,and finally to operational practices. Trust, dialogue, and leadership visibility are identified as central factors for engagement and participation in safety work. The findings also show that formal systems are perceived as important, but insufficient if they are not supported by inclusive leadership and opportunities for dialogue. Local interpretations of central safety initiatives appear to contribute to variations in how safety culture develops within the organization. Practical implications emphasized in the study include inclusive and visible leadership,promoting employees’ proactive participation, and creating psychologically safe work environments, including among colleagues. Proposed leading indicators for monitoring changes in safety culture include reporting behaviors and leadership visibility. The study was conducted as a qualitative case study in an international industrial organization. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect empirical data. The data was further analyzed through thematic analysis. The theoretical framework was based on concepts such as safety culture, psychological safety, leadership, and street-level bureaucracy. Finally, the study shows that safety culture does not develop uniformly throughout the organization but is shaped by how leadership at different organizational levels interprets, prioritizes, and legitimizes safety in daily work. Achieving a sustainable and long-term safety culture requires both formal structures and trust-based leadership practices.