The Health and Safety of Retail Workers During COVID-19:The Role of Safety Leadership

Leaders’ safety behaviors influence employees’ safety beliefs and behaviors. We examined how specific leader safety behaviors (speaking about safety and modeling safety behavior) differentially predict essential retail employees’ fear of infection, and subsequent mental health and safety behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Retail workers in the U.S. and Canada completed measures of their leaders’ safety behavior, their own fear of infection, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and self-protective behaviors at three time points (n1 = 505, n2 = 326, n3 = 218) during April and May 2020. In an observed variable path analysis, leaders’ speaking about safety increased employees’ fear of infection. Fear, in turn, promoted greater self-protective behaviors. Speaking about safety and modeling safety behavior both directly predicted post-traumatic stress symptoms among employees. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.