Developing and Validating a Respectful Workplace Climate Scale with Construction Workers as an Exemplar: a Total Worker Health® Approach
摘要
The goal of this study is to develop and validate a reliable multi-faceted Respectful Workplace Climate (RWC) Scale to assess employee perceptions of organizational policies, procedures, and practices, as well as management commitment, supervisory and coworker support, and accountability in fostering a respectful workplace. We hypothesize that RWC will be associated with important well-being and performance-related outcomes. Using multi-source data sets, we introduce an RWC Scale consisting of organization, supervisor, and coworker levels. Organization RWC captures employee perceptions of organizational policies related to workplace respect; supervisor RWC reflects employee views on supervisor effectiveness in fostering and upholding a respectful workplace climate; and coworker RWC encompasses employee perceptions of the respect exhibited among their colleagues in the workplace. The resulting scale comprises 35 items (11 organization-level items, 16 supervisor-level items, and 8 coworker-level items). Additionally, an individual-level outcome scale (personal experience) was developed with 12 items. We found evidence supporting the construct and criterion-related validity of our new scales. This study presents the first psychometrically developed and validated tool for assessing respect in the workplace, equipping organizations with a robust and reliable way to evaluate and monitor RWC progress over time.