Psychosocial safety climate: Measurement and relationship with well-being in a four-wave longitudinal study during remote work

To create healthy workplaces, organizations need tools for assessing factors contributing to employee well-being. Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) refers to shared perceptions regarding the extent to which psychological health and safety are prioritized in organizations; it is operationalized in the PSC scale. We evaluated the factor structure of the Finnish version of the PSC-4 scale, its invariance across time and concurrent and predictive relationships with perceived stress, job exhaustion, and work engagement. Moreover, the mean-level changes in PSC and well-being during enforced remote work were studied. Participants were 442 higher education employees who completed a well-being survey four times between April 2020 and February 2021. The longitudinal factor structure of the PSC-4 and well-being indicators were investigated using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The statistical analyses supported the one-factor structure of the PSC-4 and its measurement invariance across time. PSC was negatively associated with concurrent stress and job exhaustion and positively associated with concurrent work engagement at each measurement. Moreover, PSC predicted subsequent stress between each time point. Cross-lagged effects were also evident for job exhaustion at T2-T3 and T3-T4 and for work engagement at T1-T2. The mean level of PSC decreased during enforced remote work. To conclude, the Finnish PSC-4 is a valid tool for evaluating perceived psychosocial safety climate in organizations. PSC predicted well-being over time and showed subsequent relationships with job exhaustion and work engagement, which is a new contribution to PSC theory and literature. Organizations need to design interventions to improve it, especially during stressful times.