Working Together for a Collective Culture of Construction Safety

Transcription

1 Working Together for a Collective Culture of Construction Safety Ian Kennedy 1 and Don Lee 2 1 School of Construction, Economics and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 2 Recovre, Melbourne, Australia ian.kennedy@wits.ac.za; don.lee@recovre.com.au Abstract: In the Construction industry, there must also be a Collective Culture of Safety. One of the challenges facing the construction industry is in determining what more can be done about Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S). Stakeholders may appear to comply with all OH&S legislation. However, what else should be done? This paper therefore presents an analysis of the stakeholders responsible for a culture of safe collective and individual behaviour in the construction industry and their potential interactions. Previously published models for the stakeholders involved in safety are three- and fourparty models involving five different stakeholders. This paper extended the models to include ten stakeholders. All the OH&S stakeholders should all be working together to implement safe, collective and individual behaviour. The stakeholders that were identified from the literature include educators, employers (professionals, contractors and sub-contractors), employees (workers, foremen, tradesmen, labourers), clients, Trade Unions, Authorities, such as Governments (e.g., Departments of Labour and Health). These are expanded in this paper to include five additional stakeholders. It follows that the expanded group of ten health and safety stakeholders results in there being one hundred potential interactions involving stakeholder consultations and commitments. The hundred potential interactions need to be considered in order to obtain safe collective and individual behaviour. Keywords: Construction industry, safety culture, stakeholder s behaviour. 1 The Need for a Collective Culture of Safety Six km from the first-mentioned author's house was a tragic incident. The report on this incident (Muragan, 2009) had the subcontractor insisting that the workers were covered by the Workman's Compensation Act, and the workers claiming that they were forced to

2 work under unsafe conditions. The subcontractor said in effect: "Our paperwork is faultless", but the workers were saying (and sadly proving) that "The site was unsafe". The theme of this paper is that it is not just one stakeholder doing the wrong thing but that OH&S is collectively approached in a thoughtless, ill-organised and unsystematic way. The challenge is to ensure that the stakeholder's culture is such that all are fully committed to doing what is needed to achieve effective OH&S. Unfortunately, the classical models for the stakeholders involved in safety are limited to 3- and 4-party models. For example, work by Clarke (1999) in the allied field of transportation safety implies a 3-party model (operatives, supervisors and senior managers). We should be working together instead of talking past each other. But who is this "We"? It is not just three parties. Nor is it just the four parties classified as role players by Dingsdag, Biggs and Sheahan (2007) as being the "Occupational Health and Safety Officers, Foremen / Supervisors, Trade Union Representatives and the workers themselves." Consequently this paper suggests that there ten stakeholders involved. Figure 1 is a mesh, showing the ten role players in the culture of safety. Lines have been drawn from each stakeholder to every other stakeholder to show that the number of interactions is 102 = 100, if internal interactions are counted, and directions are distinguished.

3 Registered employee groups Registered employer groups Employees Contractors Insurance Groups Selfemployed persons Education & training providers Public Authorities Suppliers of products & services Figure 1. Stakeholders who have a role in achieving effective OH&S within the building industry sector and their interactions 2 Review of a Collective Culture of Safety A fundamental aspect of the construction industry today is the need to ensure the right to safety of construction workers and the safety of the subsequent occupants. Thus the focus of modern safety management systems and methods includes SHE (Safety, Health, Environment), QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety, Environment), OH&S (Occupational Health and Safety) towards a culture of safety. Nominal adherence to OH&S legal compliance in the constriction industry is not enough. There must also be a Collective Culture of Safety. One challenge facing employers in the construction industry is in determining what more they can do about OH&S. They may have an effective OH&S system; they appear to comply with OH&S

4 legislation, and performance indicators show that they have few lost-time injuries and there are no reports of any incidents (Lee and Deery, 2006). This paper uses the more modern phrase of a "culture of safety" rather than the older term (Guldenmund, 2000) of a "climate of safety", although the older phrase persists. The culture of safety is generally regarded as the common attitude and way that safety is managed at the construction site or place of work. The culture of safety involves a common system of shared beliefs, values and behaviour of those working within the industry. This culture of safety determines how the industry goes about its work and how it provides for the wellbeing of its workers. 2.1 Balanced Scorecard Mahomed (2003) advocates using a balanced scorecard tool to benchmark the organizational safety culture in construction. He argues that this tool has the potential to provide a way to translate the organization's safety policy into a clear set of goals across the four perspectives: management, operational, customer and learning, which he says represent all stakeholders. The current work expands on these stakeholders from four, with 16 interactions to ten stakeholders, with 100 potential interactions. 2.2 Safety Management Systems Safety Management Systems, by themselves are not the answer. According to Marosszeky et al., 2004: "Safety and management systems have largely been developed in response to statutory requirements. Thus reporting has focused mostly on mandatory information related to accidents and injuries. Such measures suffer from three drawbacks. Firstly, they measure what happens after the event and are reactive in terms of management response. Secondly, in the absence of any proactive measure, causal relationships cannot be established. Thirdly, they are negative in nature and acknowledged as being unsuccessful as measures of safety performance" (citing Trethewy et al. 2000, Mohamed, 2003). 2.3 Risk Perception Risk perception is a fascinating aspect of safety. According to the Web site, Risktaking (2009): "Risk taking behaviours such as rock climbing, gambling and drug taking represent one of the most perplexing problems in the field of psychology. The need for safety is fundamental, are people who take huge risks therefore illogical or mentally ill? Recent research findings shed an altogether different perspective on these behaviours however, and it seems that normal people are motivated to take risks as a result of their psychological makeup and the nature of the situation they find themselves in." People take risks when they do not or cannot do an accurate cost-benefit analysis of the statistical odds. This can happen, when emotion rules over logic or the person suffers from faulty logic or poor education or simply ascribes a low value to his life. A simple

5 example is if a construction worker fears the loss of his job more than he fears the loss of a limb from unsafe practices he is forced to follow. There is pressure to get job done no matter what the risk is. The worker needs a job to put food on the table or remit money home. Illegal gold mining of old shafts is another example of "calculated" risktaking. "I haven't had an accident doing this before" is the worker's voice-of-experience speaking. Familiarity with the construction environment sadly breeds contempt. 2.4 Employee representatives Employee representation (including trade unions) is an important factor in advancing the culture of safety. According to Walters (1996), trade union representation in health and safety plays an important role in effective health and safety, both through the role of trade unions within the workplace and through their ability to provide support for representation through training and information. In later work, Walters (1998) points out that consultation regulation had very limited support for employee representation in health and safety in small enterprises. Even having representation does not guarantee a safe workplace. 2.5 Company size Certain companies have a higher company risk profile. According to Hasle and Limborg (2006), the employees of small enterprises are exposed to higher risks than employees who are working in larger enterprises, and those enterprises have difficulties in controlling risks. The most effective preventive approach seems to be simple, low cost solutions, disseminated through personal contact. It also is argued (Mayhew and Quinlan, 1997) that "poorer OHS is an important consequence of subcontracting." 2.6 Developing a positive safety culture Developing a positive safety culture is important. Previous research by Mohamed (2002) in the construction industry reveals "the importance of the role of management commitment, communication, workers' involvement, attitudes, competence as well as supportive and supervisory environments, in achieving a positive safety climate." An important document in this field is by Dingsdag et al., (2006) a summary of which is reproduced in Table 1.

6 Table 1. The five sections of a Construction Safety Competency Framework and a brief explanation of their content (Source: Dingsdag et al., 2006) The framework structure 1. Developing a positive safety culture a definition of safety culture and the particular principal contractor staff actions that lead to a positive safety culture. 2. Identifying Safety Management Tasks (SMTs) and safety critical positions a definition of key staff competency requirements, based on identifying the safety management tasks that safety critical position holders must be able to complete effectively. 3. Defining competency requirements: The Task and Position Competency Matrix the allocation of competency requirements for the identified principal contractor s safety critical positions, that is, who needs to be able to do what activities. 4. Integrating the framework guidelines for implementing the competency framework outlined in the document. 5. SMT competency specifications and culture outcomes to be achieved elements for each of the 39 identified safety management tasks. Furthermore, a Safety Climate Index can be used to measure the climate of safety. See for example Garcia et al. (2004). In the same year, project managers were researched by Teo, Ling and Chong (2004). In particular, they found "that site accidents are more likely to happen when there are inadequate company policies, unsafe practices, poor attitudes of construction personnel, poor management commitment and insufficient safety knowledge and training of workers." According to Nahrgang, Morgeson, and Hofmann (2007), "the role of safety climate... is one of the most often studied antecedents of safety performance." We would therefore specialize their generalization to argue that the culture of safety is a prerequisite to a safe performance in the construction industry. Earlier work by Biggs, Dingsdag, Sheahan and Stenson (2005) "indicated the strong role that... workplace collaboration had in influencing the ability of organisations to develop and maintain a positive safety culture." We adopt their (2005) definition of a culture of safety to describe the values, norms, attitudes and beliefs that are held collectively towards safety within an organisation. 2.7 Conclusion to the review It would seem that research has been done on some stakeholders, but not on their combined contribution to a culture of safety. This paper now investigates the stakeholders and their interactions. 3 Towards a Study of OH&S Culture This section presents important factors in planning, designing, building and improving a culture of safety in the construction industry, where people work together to implement safe, collective and individual behaviour. The section therefore first identifies particular strategies to achieve that culture.

7 According to Cooper and Philips (2004), safety climate measures are useful diagnostic tools in ascertaining employee's perceptions of the way that safety is being operationalized. Other researchers have built a safety performance-measurement tool. Ahmad and Gibb (2003) summarize its use: "The safety culture of an organization is essentially a description of the attitude of personnel about the company they work for, their perceptions of the magnitude of the risks to which they are exposed and their beliefs in the necessity, practicality and effectiveness of controls. Safety culture, a sub-set of the overall organizational culture, is now believed to be a key predictor of safety performance. Organizations with good safety cultures have employees with positive attitudes towards safety practices. These organizations have mechanisms in place to gather safety-related information, measure safety performance and bring people together to learn how to work more safely." This paper now outlines the foundation of behaviour-based safety management. Behaviour-based safety is commonly defined as applying behavioural sciences to change worker s behaviour in real-world situations, such as on the construction site. It concentrates on what workers are doing, it analyzes why they do it and then applies interventions based on research results to improve what the workers are doing. Safety Management Systems (SMSs) play an important role. This approach puts increased reliance on the construction industry to cultivate a culture that will increase safety. In a way, it is a type of performance-based regulation. Guidelines have been developed for SMSs, as documented by Mitchison and Porter (1996) and hazards can be minimized. One particular SMS documented by Quintana (1999) is Task-delineated safety, which draws attention to the need for everybody to keep the areas safe. Safety competency is an important issue that must be addressed and a Safety Competency Framework is given by Dingsdag et al. (2006). This must be undertaken by managing and collaborating with external stakeholders. According to Harrison and St John (1996), an increasing management emphasis on "boundarylessness" has created a new mindset concerning external stakeholders. It is our view that safety cannot be successful without engaging all stakeholders to help in all the interactions. Performance measurement is only one angle of the triangle of Safety Culture, Climate and Performance Measurement. Mohamed (2004) makes the valid point that working under pressure is the norm in the construction industry, leading to conflict between production requirements and safety requirements. On a more positive note, Mohamed (2004) points out that a "commitment and communication are prerequisites to creating and sustaining a positive safety climate in construction site environments". A "supportive environment" is important. Increased training in the valuable skill of detecting hazards is suggested. Amongst other things, management systems must be in place, as Bakri et al. (2006) point out.

8 4 Achieving a Collective OH&S Culture The authors have defined the circle of ten interacting stakeholders in safe collective and individual behaviour as being those shown in Figure 1. There are therefore 10 integrated stakeholders (new ones shown below in bold), whose behaviour should collectively play a role in achieving the desired health and safety outcomes. These are the: 1. Employee's behaviour 2. Education and training provider's behaviour 3. Authority's (Government s and Institute s) behaviour 4. Suppliers of products and service's behaviour 5. The public's (3rd party s) behaviour 6. Self-employed person's behaviour 7. Contractor's (and supervisor s) behaviour 8. Registered employer group's behaviour 9. Registered employee group's behaviour 10. Insurance group s behaviour 1. The individual employee's behaviour involves what people in the organisation do on a daily basis. Examples are maintaining suitable housekeeping and orderliness at the workplace, complying with safe work procedures, reporting incidents and hazards as required, being involved in risk assessment and control and maintaining an awareness of health and safety needs at the workplace. In time, a culture of being "my brother's keeper" should be actively encouraged to support a culture of zero tolerance towards workplace injury. Such a culture means safety has indeed become a shared value and responsibility. (Lee and Deery, 2006) 2 Education and training institution s behaviour can involve promoting awareness about OH&S principles, legal obligations as well as developing skills in applying practical OH&S strategies at the workplace. 3 Government and other Authority s behaviour involves the pursuit of a legal structure and its compliance, as well as providing funding to promote OH&S awareness. An important requirement would be that all duty-holders comply with particular legal duties as far as is reasonably practicable. 4 The behaviour of suppliers can involve supporting OH&S by ensuring that they actively comply with their legal obligations to ensure that their products / services are safe and healthy, and that suitable information is supplied to the end user.

9 5 The behaviour of the public involves playing an important role in demanding that suitable OH&S laws exist and are adequately enforced. 6 Self employed person s behaviour involves complying with their legal duties of care by adopting particular safe work practices, and having the evidence to support this. 7. The behaviour of the contractor must result in a developing of the OH&S vision, framework and system. From within the contractor's organisation there must be a structure of goals, objectives, leadership, expectations, resources, budgets and specific tools. These are not merely beliefs and attitudes but entail tangible and observable behaviour in the form of leadership, values, specific documents and statements of what is required. (Lee and Deery, 2006) 8. and 9. The behaviour of registered groups involves the actual engagement of people in achieving the practical OH&S objectives, where there is accountability, quality and ownership of both actions and outcomes. This behaviour can also be observed through means of audits, personal commitments, risk assessment tasks and communication that should eventually be reflected in the improved injury and incident data. (Lee and Deery, 2006) 10. The behaviour of various insurance groups involves providing practical advice and guidance to their clients on a value-added or a fee-for-service basis concerning OH&S strategies. Lee and Deery (2006) also give 15 valuable "Key behaviour safety tools" some practical examples and suggestions on how to improve the safe collective and individual behaviour. In the present paper, the authors have presented the importance and application of what they describe as "safe collective and individual behaviour" as a fundamental requirement for achieving sustained success in OH&S in the Construction Industry. According to Moura et al. (2007), clients blame poor task preparation, lack of specific training and the lack of individual protection as main reasons for construction incidents, while contractors (simply) attribute responsibilities to the high risk of the activity. The key to successful OH&S lies in strengthening the delicate balance between legal compliance, hazard management and organisational, managerial and individual behaviour. Clarke (1999) correctly states that "accurate intergroup perceptions are essential to the development of mutual trust and understanding between levels, which forms the basis for a positive safety culture". To now extend Clarke s (1999) idea, a key feature of a company's safety culture is shared perceptions amongst all stakeholders on the importance of safety.

10 5 Discussion Not all of the 100 interactions are of equal value. For example, the self-employed worker may have no link to a Labour Union. It is therefore necessary to establish which interactions will provide the greatest leverage in ensuring a safer Construction industry. Surprisingly, little research has been done on reducing the two main causes of injuries in the construction industry. See for example, Rivara and Thompson (2000). These two causes are workers falling from heights and objects falling on workers. Perhaps the ten stakeholders could start processes by concentrating on communicating with each other in trust and with understanding to reduce these two main causes. 6 Recommendations The interactions between various stakeholders should be minimally structured around: Contract arrangements to safely undertake building activities. Compliance with OH&S laws. Behaviour and consultation processes to maintain safety. We emphasise that the law should require that stakeholders must comply with particular duties that broadly require them to, so far as "reasonably practicable", eliminate or at least reduce risk to health and safety of all persons affected by any construction activity. However, the law is not the sole answer. Every stakeholder has to promote the need for safety. We have to develop a "local culture of safety", which "reproduces itself". It reproduces itself by the culture "rubbing off" from the stakeholders, who are tasked with the double burden of ensuring that other stakeholders will also pass the message on to those they meet, to ensure that the culture persists over generations. In essence, a safety culture is "the right way that we do things around here and to do otherwise is not okay". On site, all must immediately think when they see an unsafe practice: "But that's wrong!" and do something reasonable about it.

11 References (All Web pages last viewed 2/12/2009) Ahmad, R.K. and Gibb, A.G.F. (2003), "Measuring safety culture with SPMT fielddata." Journal of Construction Research. 4(1), pp March 2003 Bakri, Ahmadon plus Rosli Mohd Zin, Mohd Saidin Misnan and Abdul Hakim Mohammed (stet). (2006), "Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) management systems: towards development of safety and health culture." In: 6 th Asia-Pacific Structural Engineering and Constr. Conf., 5-6 September 2006, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Biggs, H.C, Dingsdag, D.P, Sheahan, V. L, and Stenson, N. J. (2005), "The Role of Collaboration in Defining and Maintaining a Safety Culture: Australian Perspectives in the Construction Sector." In Proc. Association of Researchers in Construction Management 21 st Annual Conference. Clarke, S. "Perceptions of Organizational Safety: Implications for the Development of Safety Culture." Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20(2) Mar., 1999, pp Cooper, M.D., and Phillips, R.A. (2004), "Exploratory analysis of the safety climate and safety behavior relationship" J. of Safety Research. 35(5), pp Dingsdag, D.P., Biggs, H.C., Sheahan, V.L. and Cipolla, D.J. (2006), "A Construction Safety Competency Framework: Improving OH&S performance by creating and maintaining a safety culture." Brisbane, Australia: Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation. Garcia A.M., Boix, P., and Canosa, C. (2004), "Why do workers behave unsafely at work? Determinants of safe work practices in industrial workers." Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2004; 61: pp Harrison, J.S. and St. John, C.H. (1996), "Managing and Partnering with External Stakeholders." Academy of Management Executive (2). Hasle, P. and Limborg, H.J. (2006), "A Review of the Literature on Preventive Occupational Health and Safety Activities in Small Enterprises." Industrial Health 44 (1) Jan. pp Lee, D. and Deery, M., (2006), "Promoting a behaviour based safety culture within a manufacturing company" Safety Institute of Australia Conference, Melbourne. Mayhew, C. Quinlan, M. (1997), "Subcontracting and occupational health and safety in the residential building industry." Industrial Relations Journal, 28(3), Sept. 1997, pp crawler=true Mahomed, S. (2002), "Safety Climate in Construction Site Environments." J. Constr. Engineering and Management. 128 Iss. 5, pp (September / October 2002) Mahomed, S. (2003), "Scorecard Approach to Benchmarking Organizational Safety Culture in Construction," J. Constr. Engrg. and Mgmt. 129, Iss 1, pp (January / February 2003) Mahomed, S. (2004), "Safety Culture, Climate and Performance Measurement." in Construction safety management systems. Rowlinson, S.M. (Ed.) Taylor & Francis. ISBN: pp

12 Marosszeky, M., Karim, K., Davis, S., Naik, N., (2004), "Lessons learnt in developing effective performance measures for construction safety management" Proc. 12 th Annual Conf. of the Int. Group on Lean Construction. Denmark. Aug. 3-5, 2004 pp Mitchison N. and Porter S. (Editors). (1998), "Guidelines on a major accident prevention policy and safety management system, as required by Council Directive 96/82/EC (SEVESO II). SafetyManagementSystems.html Moura, H.M.P., Teixeira, J.M.C. and Pires, B. (2007), "Safety and quality in the Portuguese construction industry", Construction for development: Proceedings of the CIB World Building Congress Cape Town, South Africa, pp Nahrgang, J.D., Morgeson, F. P. & Hofmann, D.A. (2007), "Predicting safety performance: A metaanalysis of safety and organizational constructs." Poster session presented at the 22 nd Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, New York, NY. Quintana, R. (1999) A task-delineated safety approach for slip, trip and fall hazards" Safety Science 33, Issues 1-2, October 1999, pp Murugan, S. (2009), "Workers feel unsafe." Rekord Newspaper. Pretoria. South Africa Risktaking (2009) Rivara, F.P. Thompson, D.C. (2000), "Prevention of falls in the construction industry evidence for program effectiveness." Am. J. of Preventive Medicine, (4S) pp Teo, E.A.L., Ling, F.Y.Y. and Chong, A.F.W. (2005), "Framework for project managers to manage construction safety." Intl. J. of Project Mgt 23, Iss. 4, May, pp Walters, D., (1996), "Trade Unions and the Effectiveness of Worker Representation in Health and Safety in Britain. International Journal of Health Services 26(4). Walters, D., (1998), "Employee representation and health and safety: A strategy for improving health and safety performance in small enterprises?" Employee Relations 20. Issue 2. pp ISSN: