Background Leading indicators are preferred to identify injuries and fatalities in construction industry. Safety climate is a leading indicator of construction injuries yet it is not known how workers’ safety climate scores relate to safety programs of different maturity levels.

Methods This study examined the relationship between safety program scores based on documents and contractor reported activities and project leading indicators of contractor safety climate, safety behaviors of workers and crews, and safety attitudes of coworkers from employee surveys. Hierarchical linear regression models accounted for contractor size and number of workers, nested in contractors within projects. Separate models examined the relationships between safety program scores and 1) contractor safety climate; 2) coworker attitude scores, 3) employees’ own behavior score, and 4) crew behavior scores.

Results 446 employees of 40 contractors from three commercial construction projects participated. Many contractors (n=16) had good safety programs with 15 or more safety activities (out of 17) from organizational management, worker participation, hazard identification, and training domains. Stronger safety programs had higher safety climate scores (5.15 point difference on a 100 point scale, p=0.05), better coworker safety attitudes (6.69 points, p=0.01), better crew safety behaviors (5.34 points, p=0.02) and higher self-rated behaviors (5.14 points, p=0.02) compared to safety programs with fewer safety items.

Conclusions Contractors with more comprehensive safety programs were perceived to have stronger safety climate. Better safety programs were also associated with better self-reported safety performance of coworkers, crews, and individual workers. Stronger safety programs incorporated activities from all four domains Safety programs that include activities that cover safety of management and worker influence safety performance and safety climate as perceived by the workers.