The day-to-day stability of safety climate in the offshore oil and gas industry

Despite the importance of safety climate, organizations typically only measure safety climate annually, at best. Organizational climate theory describes climate as a stable construct, yet it also proposes that climate is a function of the dynamic processes of symbolic interaction and sensemaking. The workplace safety literature emphasizes the need to maintain vigilance and avoid complacency, emphasizing the dynamic nature of organizations. This study followed two organizational samples of offshore oil and gas workers (Sample 1 [n = 34]; Sample 2 [n = 36]) for a period of 28 days (1623 daily observations of safety climate). Overall, the daily means, standard deviations and 1-day lagged correlations of safety climate remained very stable over the course of the hitch (work period) and the stability of correlations over time was slightly more pronounced at the workgroup level. Despite this observed stability, the relationship between any two measurements of safety climate significantly diminished as the amount of time between measurements increased. Dynamic structural equation modelling revealed that some individuals perceived a much more stable safety climate than others, but none of the 15 person-level variables explained this between-person variability in stability. Results suggest that climate should be assessed monthly.