Impact of Diversity and Safety climate on employees’ responses to job dissatisfaction: a preliminary study in the tertiary sector

The last 15 years literature has started to focus on the idea that organizations have multiple climates pertaining to specific aspects (such as climate for safety and diversity), and that global – i.e., organisational – climate and facet-specific climates can show potential mutual influences. At the same time, there is only scarce research exploring the impact employees’ perceptions of organisational policies, practices, and procedures (defined as organisational climate) have on employees’ dissatisfaction, especially when those policies, practices and procedures are related to safety and diversity. For that reason, this preliminary research wanted to explore the role that organisational climate has in predicting employees’ exit, voice, loyalty and neglect (EVLN), through the roles of specific climate for safety and climate for diversity. A quantitative research design was used; 304 employees working in the tertiary sector completed an online questionnaire on the variables above after being informed about scope of research, confidentiality of data and given their written consent. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling with MPlus 8.8 to assess whether the effect of organisational climate on employees’ EVLN behaviours was mediated by safety and diversity climates. Results showed that safety climate partially mediated the relationship between organisational climate and loyalty and neglect; diversity climate, instead, partially mediated the relationship between organisational climate and voice and neglect and fully mediated the one between organisational climate and exit. Although data is self-report and cross-sectional (hence susceptible of single source and information biases), this study represents one of the very few existing research investigating the impact different climates simultaneously have on employee’s responses to job dissatisfaction. Specifically, employees’ perceptions of organisation’s priority given to safety seem relevant for predicting employees’ loyalty and neglect, whereas those perceptions related to diversity would have a central role on employees’ voice, exit and on neglect behaviors.