Workplace and safety perceptions among New York City employees after the 9/11 attacks

Abstract

This study examined associations of individual characteristics on perceived workplace conditions and safety in a volunteer sample of 254 employees from businesses in New York City's World Trade Center (WTC) towers and other area workplaces who completed structured diagnostic and disaster-specific interviews an average of 35 months after the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks. WTC workplace employees perceived greater workplace responsiveness to their post-9/11 needs relative to employees of other workplaces, independent of individual demographic and other disaster-related variables; they also reported lower perceived safety at work. Thus, employee disaster-related workplace location, an organizational-level variable, was a powerful determinant of individual perceptions of the postdisaster workplace and its responsiveness, suggesting the importance of organizational disaster planning and response in helping workers adjust to the postdisaster workplace environment and promoting personal healing and recovery.

Keywords: Collective and organizational factors; corporate culture; multivariate models; perceptions of safety; terrorism; workplace response to disaster.