The factor structure of a safety leadership assessment tool for the mining industry.

Abstract

Research has established that an organisation’s safety culture plays an important role in its safety performance and that developing safety leadership is one of the key elements of an optimal safety culture. The assessment of safety leadership behaviours forms the basis of safety leadership development strategies. Although several instruments are available to assess leadership behaviours only one measuring instrument was found specifically designed to assess safety leadership. The main aim of this article is to describe how exploratory factor analysis was applied to establish whether the Leadership Assessment Tool is a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of safety leadership. The second aim was to determine if a leadership assessment measure also indicates any progress achieved as a result of development actions. The study was conducted in an organisation in the South African mining industry. The purposive sample (n = 54) consisted of management, employees, and health and safety representatives. The study followed a pre-test post-test design and data was collected by means of a 360-degree type survey. The data was analysed by means of factor analysis and Cronbach’s coefficient Alpha. Results indicated that the Leadership Assessment Tool is a valid and reliable measure to assess safety leadership.