Safety leaders: who are they? What do they do

Abstract

There appears to be no unequivocal or unambiguous definition of safety leadership and no definitive statement of the roles and practices of a safety leader. Yet the questions: Who is a safety leader? Where do they reside in the organization? What roles and practices are constitutive of safety leadership?, are important ones and affect organizational working environments and the safety of employees. The purpose of this report is to review safety-related literature in order to address these questions. It also reviews the wider academic literature on leadership known to the authors to identify alternative leadership perspectives that may impact safety and to suggest possible directions for future research.