Fostering a Thriving Workplace: Exploring the Impact of Psychosocial Safety Climate on Organisational Citizenship Behaviour and Employee Task Performance

Fostering a thriving workplace is essential for enhancing employee well-being, promoting organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and sustaining high levels of employee performance. Amid growing global interest in fostering psychologically healthy workplaces, psychosocial safety climate (PSC) has emerged as a vital construct for understanding and enhancing employee well-being, reflecting the organisational policies, practices, and procedures that prioritise the psychological health and safety of employees. As an upstream organisational resource, PSC shapes job design and broader occupational environments, affecting not only psychological outcomes for employees but also proactivity and motivation. Despite its growing traction in occupational health psychology, a notable empirical gap remains in examining how PSC fosters positive employee behaviours and performance, particularly in the under-researched contexts of non-Western and developing economies, where resource constraints and industrialisation pressures are typical.To confirm the initial focus of the study, a bibliometric analysis was conducted using 190 peer-reviewed journal articles retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The results reveal that, although academic interest in PSC has grown significantly since 2010, empirical research linking PSC to OCB and employee task performance—the capacity to execute core duties with proficiency, adapt effectively to evolving demands, and demonstrate proactive engagement—remains scarce, particularly in non-Western contexts and the manufacturing sector. The thesis addresses this gap by investigating why and how employees’ perceptions of PSC vary, and how these perceptions directly and indirectly influence OCB and task performance. Building on this insight, the study employed a predominantly quantitative approach to exploring these complex relationships, enriched through hybrid techniques such as bibliometric analysis and expert-informed model validation. Grounded in job demands–resources (JD-R) theory and the conservation of resources (CoR) theory, this study also examined the direct and indirect influence of PSC on OCB and employee task performance, incorporating emotional intelligence as a mediating personal resource and job autonomy as a moderating job resource. Notably, survey data were collected from 1,041 employees in the manufacturing sector in Sri Lanka, which were then subjected to structural equation modelling (SEM) using SmartPLS 4 for data analysis. The overall model demonstrated strong predictive power for task performance (R² = 0.461).The results underscore the central role of PSC in fostering discretionary behaviours and performance outcomes. More specifically, PSC is a significant predictor of OCB (β = 0.124, p = .001) and task performance (β = 0.155, p < .001), suggesting that employees who perceive their organisational climate as psychologically safe are more likely to go above and beyond their formal job descriptions and perform better in their core tasks. Emotional intelligence (EI) emerged as a strong mediating construct within the model, with PSC acting as a positive influence (β = 0.337, p < .001). In turn, emotional intelligence predicts OCB (β = 0.442, p < .001) and task performance (β = 0.209, p < .001). These paths also demonstrate substantial effect sizes (f² = 0.199 for EI → OCB; f² = 0.236 for OCB → task performance), confirming that emotional intelligence is a crucial socio-emotional resource for translating positive climate perceptions into behavioural and performance outcomes.Interestingly, while job autonomy (JA) does not significantly moderate the direct effects of OCB or EI on task performance (e.g., JA × EI → ETP, β = -0.019, p = .535), a notable interaction emerged between PSC and job autonomy in terms of emotional intelligence (β = 0.052, p = .034). This implies that the positive effects of PSC on employees’ emotional capacities are amplified when job autonomy is high. Such findings support the notion that autonomy acts as a contextual enabler rather than a direct performance catalyst, particularly in structured sectors like manufacturing, where routine tasks may constrain discretionary decision-making. Further, the analysis confirms two significant indirect effects. First, PSC influences task performance through emotional intelligence alone (β = 0.070, p < .001) and through the sequential pathway of emotional intelligence followed by OCB (β = 0.066, p < .001). This finding highlights a sequential gain spiral in which PSC fosters personal resources, which in turn drive positive behaviours and performance, validating the central assumptions of the JD-R and CoR theories.Notably, the demographic analyses also reveal variations in employees’ perceptions of PSC. For example, younger employees, particularly those from Generation Z, report the lowest mean PSC score (M = 34.09), indicating a weaker alignment between managerial messages and the psychological safety expectations of young workers. By contrast, employees with more than two years of tenure and those from Generation X perceive significantly higher levels of PSC, suggesting a potential role for organisational familiarity and generational norms to shape climate perceptions. These insights underscore the need for PSC interventions that are sensitive to the distinct needs of critical demographic groups. This study delivers several contributions. Theoretically, it enriches the JD-R and CoR frameworks by modelling how organisational, job, and personal resources interact through socio-emotional pathways to shape performance and behavioural outcomes. This addresses longstanding theoretical calls for contextualised and operational models that illuminate psychological mechanisms in workplace research. Methodologically, it demonstrates the value of evaluating PSC from an employee-centric perspective, employing SmartPLS-based SEM to test complex mediator and moderator relationships rigorously. The study also validates EI as a quantifiable construct that serves as a mediator and a strategic employee capability within the JDR and CoR theories and organisational behaviour research.From a practical standpoint, the findings provide actionable guidance and intervention strategies for leaders, policymakers, and HR practitioners in the manufacturing sector and other organisational settings. Notably, this study represents the first empirical investigation into PSC within the Sri Lankan context, offering foundational evidence for promoting psychologically safe, performance-enhancing work environments in developing economies. Promoting a strong PSC is not merely a health-related initiative, but rather a strategic foundation for boosting motivation, discretionary engagement, and in-role performance. Integrating emotional intelligence training and enhancing participatory work design and structures can further amplify these gains. The research provides evidence that customised onboarding and mentoring practices to strengthen PSC awareness among new and younger employees would be of benefit. By embedding psychological safety into everyday operations and aligning it with job design and leadership practices, organisations tend to foster resilient, high-performing, and mentally healthy workplaces.Finally, this study fills a critical research gap by empirically validating how PSC contributes to organisational citizenship behaviour and task performance through the mobilisation of emotional and structural resources. Although positioned in Sri Lanka’s manufacturing sector, the insights might be broadly applicable to many organisations seeking to build a sustainable, engaged, and psychologically enriched workforce in today’s dynamic work environment.