Workplace Safety Management Practices, Fear, Resources, and Employee Involvement During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Narrative Review.

Introduction: There are important workplace health lessons to be learned from the pandemic. Methods: This study summarizes the relationships between workplace safety practices, fear, resources, and employee engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic through a narrative review on articles published between January 2020 and June 2025 using a primary literature search base. Results: Organizations have had to implement workplace safety management practices aligned with their occupational safety and health management systems in response to COVID-19. Safety management practices include safety initiatives and training as well as employee involvement. Methods to increase employee involvement include fear and anxiety. However, although fear and anxiety promote safety compliance and safe behavior, they also wear down employees and increase their work distraction and turnover intentions. Therefore, social and psychological resources need to be strengthened to overcome this dilemma. These resources can also help safety management practices today as the pandemic begins to wind down. Conclusions: Future research should focus on identifying ways to strengthen employees' social and psychological resources without relying on disasters. To this end, an integration of conservation of resource theory and behavioral theory may be useful.