Research identifies universal strategies for construction worksites
Incentives and rewards helped promote and encourage safe behaviour during the construction for the 2012 London Olympic games, according to a study by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), a health and safety research and standard-setting body based in Leicester, U.K.
Positive feedback was constantly being given to workers on the ground, which contributed to high morale and led to a safer worksite, said Jane White, IOSH research and information services manager.
“We’re not talking here about cash incentives or anything like that,” said White. “It was actual recognition of good work, safe practices. It was a very open culture that way.”
Providing incentives and rewards is one of five strategies researchers identified during the Olympic build that can be used at construction sites around the world, IOSH said.
“They were looking at trying to evaluate the effectiveness of how health and safety is communicated and then also how it’s understood by the workers on the site and how that effected their attitudes and behaviour,” says White. “It was a very specific piece of research that was looking to quantify what good communication is and what it looks like and then how it can then be replicated.”
The findings can certainly be used elsewhere, according to Jeff Lyth, regional safety co-ordinator with B.C. Construction Safety Alliance (BCCSA), a non-profit safety association developing health and safety programs for businesses in British Columbia.
“The concepts are exactly the same and this really represents this international cutting edge of study and concern about what it takes to really takes to really create optimal business concepts in the physical working world and also what it takes to create as much care for the worker,” says Lyth, who served as a regional safety manager for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
The importance of rewarding and recognizing workers involved in construction projects is becoming more widely acknowledged in the construction world, according to Lyth.
“What we’re trying to do is create a better understanding of the human dynamic at play so that we can rally more intrinsic motivators that will do a better job of guiding behaviours when no one is watching,” he said, adding it’s important to choose rewards that don’t encourage workers to only be safe when the supervisor is around.
Four other key areas were highlighted which can be used in construction companies and projects of all sizes.
Lead from the top
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), the public body responsible for developing and building new venues for the London games. set standards and engaged with workers to direct, motivate and change behaviour by focusing on long-term goals, according to the research. The ODA knew what it wanted to achieve in terms of health and safety before construction began and planning meant leaders could provide direction to contractors and employees.
“They were looking to particularly direct and motivate behaviours on site, changing them from what perhaps was the normal safety culture and making that a long-term goal over the three years of the project,” White said.
It’s a concept that isn’t new, but can be difficult to put in place, said Lyth.
“We realize here at the BCCSA that leading from the top and having the people or senior management who are responsible for projects really have to set the tone and make it a value of theirs,” he said.
Developing confident supervisors
Having technically knowledgeable supervisors working on a project can have positive effects on health and safety, the research concluded. Supervisors were equipped with softer communication skills which influenced understanding of the project and on-site behaviour.
“There was a very visible set of people on site that were there solely to be communicated (to about) any safety messaging,” said White. “They went through competency training to make sure that they were skilled to do that.”
Park-wide supervisor training was instituted during the build, which was one of the strengths of the project, said the leader of the research team, Allistair Cheyne, director of internationalization and accreditation at Loughborough University, in Loughborough, U.K.
“I think they recognized the importance of supervisors in taking initiatives,” he said. “They not only recognized that on a micro scale, but across the park they decided to implement supervisor training”
Supervisors don’t always have a group of other supervisors to work with on a day-to-day basis, but during the Olympic build they fostered that type of community which led to increased communication and a positive safety environment, Cheyne said.
Confident supervisors can actually be inspiring, according to Lyth.
“One of the factors of competent supervisors is their skills at influencing and understanding behaviours,” he said. “You could say that inspiring the hearts and minds on the job is an aspect of competent supervision.”
Fostering positive safety culture
Safety was a “dominating factor” of workplace culture at the Olympic build site, according to the research, which determined having managers concerned with the well-being of workers led to a safer worksite.
“There were on-site occupational physicians,” said White. “They ran stop-smoking campaigns… They found by doing this that the workers were much more likely to get involved in the health and safety.”
Workers were encouraged to approach their supervisors with concerns and they would actually be addressed, said Cheyne.
“It’s this idea that people can make mistakes, but learn from them,” he said. “They’re not afraid to discuss things that have gone wrong, things that have gone right.”
Reviewing and learning
Problems were reviewed and communicated across the organization to improve health and safety, researchers found.
When you consider the scale of the build, they were very good at keeping everyone informed so best practices could be carried out, said Cheyne.
“They were very good at sharing information through a reviewing and learning process,” he said. “They weren’t afraid to say this happened here and I want to tell everybody about it, whereas normally, you might think in a competitive environment, you wouldn’t be telling your competitors what’s gone wrong and what’s not gone wrong.”
This might be the most important lesson from the research, Lyth said.
“In the old models of leadership… everybody was sort of told just enough information to do their piece of the puzzle. We now know the limitations of that,” he said. “It’s important that everybody knows how their piece fits into the bigger picture and it helps them work more cohesively as a team.”
IOSH, which has about 41,500 members around the world, and the Health and Safety Executive, the independent watchdog for work-related health and safety in the United Kingdom, commissioned Loughborough University to investigate how safety techniques were communicated, along with their impact on multiple contractors, during Olympic build.
