An Actively Caring Model for Occupational Safety: A Field Test

Actively caring refers to individuals caring enough about the health and safety of others to act accordingly. Actively caring behavior in an industrial context can take the form of continually looking for environmental hazards and unsafe work practices and implementing appropriate corrective actions when unsafe conditions or behaviors are observed. Individuals presumed most likely to actively care are those high in self-esteem (i.e., feel valuable), optimism (i.e., feel they can make a difference), and group belongingness or cohesiveness (e.g., feel close to members of their work group). In order to test the actively caring model, this study assessed the relationship between self-esteem, group cohesion, and optimism with employees' self reports of willingness to actively care. In addition to self report data, we assessed the occurrence of certain actively caring behaviors in the work setting. Specifically, actively caring was measured by counting the number of "actively caring thank you cards" given or received for actively caring behaviors. Self-esteem, group cohesion, and optimism scores predicted significant and independent variance in self reports to actively care. Furthermore, those workers who either gave or received thank you cards scored significantly higher on measures of selfesteem and group cohesiveness than those workers who did not give or receive thank you cards. Implications for future research and application of the actively caring concept are discussed.