The role of psychological empowerment, thriving and safety climate on reducing turnover intention

• Retaining experienced people in high-risk work environments is a critical challenge with serious consequences. • The safety literature emphasizes safety climate as an explanatory variable at the expense of individual agency. • We found that thriving mediated the relationship between psychological empowerment and turnover intention. • Safety climate moderated the path between psychological empowerment and thriving. Retaining experienced employees in high-risk environments is a persistent challenge with significant human and financial consequences and thus, we argue the importance of reducing turnover intentions. One criticism of the safety literature is the emphasis placed on safety climate to explain behaviour at the expense of better understanding the role of individual agency in safety compliance. In this study we tested a moderated-mediation model that draws on psychological empowerment, thriving and safety climate to explain turnover intention. We proposed that, 1) thriving would mediate the relationship between psychological empowerment and turnover intention, and, 2) that safety climate would moderate the path between psychological empowerment and thriving. The model was tested via a two-wave survey of 306 participants. The results showed that psychological empowerment was positively linked with thriving and in turn, thriving was associated with less turnover. The results further suggested that the influence of psychological empowerment on thriving is less when safety climate is high. We argue that a strong safety climate provides the resources such that all employees feel that can contribute in meaningful ways. Our results offer a strategy to reduce turnover in safety critical occupations, and we make several recommendations for future studies.