The Influences of Recruitment Processes and Selection Predictors on New Employee Safety

Abstract

New employee safety is partly determined by how members of an organization behave toward them when they begin work. Research suggests that how members of an organization behave toward a new employee is partly determined by the employees’ perceptions of what the organization has done during the recruitment and selection processes (what they have done to hire the new employee). Where employees think that organizational processes have successfully delivered a new employee who is able to, and will work safely, they may be less inclined to engage in behaviors to ensure the new employee’s, or indeed their own, safety. In this chapter, research on how employees perceive recruitment and selection processes, and how these perceptions can influence the employees’ perception of new employee risk, and how they behave toward a new employee is discussed. This chapter also examines recruitment and selection processes, with a particular emphasis on methods which can be used by an organization to assess (predict) a new employee’s safety behavior. Recommendations for the adoption of recruitment and selection processes, and procedures to ensure employees correctly perceive the organization’s ability to predict new employee safety behavior, and ways of ensuring employees behave appropriately toward new employees, are discussed.