Is Your Boss Really Smarter Than You Are? The Influence of the Length of Employment and the Level of Hierarchy on Employee Knowledge about Risk Management

This research paper deals with knowledge about risk management; in particular, it examines employee knowledge about handling risks in the construction sector. A survey was conducted among personnel working in the construction business; research methodology is based on a standardised questionnaire. Respondents from all levels of hierarchy and with different lengths of employment are compared in order to find out the influence of these factors on know-how and skills. In the second step data was analysed with statistical methods, such as standard deviation or correlation of different variables. As a main result with regard to the length of service, two groups of employees can be distinguished: Employees with less and employees with more than two years in a company. Two years of service form a kind of threshold, up to which the knowledge increases markedly, while after that it only grows at a slower pace. In terms of the level of hierarchy an almost linear trend was observed, confirming that there is a strong relationship between position within the company and knowledge about risk management: The higher the level of hierarchy, the greater the knowledge of the employees.