PERCEPTIONS OF SAFETY AMONG CONSTRUCTION PROFESSIONALS

Abstract

The health and safety of construction jobsites in the United States has been a concern for a long time among industry practitioners and researchers. Despite all the efforts, the number of construction workplace fatalities has increased in the last decade. Besides that, companies and contractors suffer greatly because of the financial burden imposed as a result of safety accidents. In order to address the problem, recent studies have turned their attention to the more proactive approaches, such as assessing workers' perceptions of safety climate and safety hazards that have been utilized in various industries and yielded positive outcomes. The present study focused on measuring workers' perceptions of safety on commercial construction projects with regard to three distinct variables of safety climate, safety control, and hazard perception. The link between workplace safety performance, injury rates, and each of the aforementioned indicators has been examined in existing studies. However, limited attempts have been made to explore any possible relationship among those factors. Therefore, filling this gap became the goal of this research study. Additionally, the author sought to investigate whether employment type and previous accidents affect perceptions of safety among construction employees. A quantitative research strategy was adopted for the study. Data was gathered from construction workers (n = 118) from two large healthcare construction projects using survey questionnaires. Separate questionnaires were developed for the managerial workers and field workers in English and Spanish. Those who spend most of their time on the jobsite performing direct tasks of construction were categorized as field workers; those whose prime responsibilities include managerial duties and spend most of their time in the jobsite offices such as project engineers, superintendents, and project managers were categorized as managerial workers. Of 118 respondents who completed the survey, 31 were managerial workers and 87 were field workers. Analysis of the data showed that managerial workers had a significantly higher perception of workers’ safety than the field workers regarding all three variables considered in this study: safety climate, safety control, and hazard perception. This disparity of the perception of workers’ safety can be critical as managerial workers typically make various project-level decisions including safety policies that affect the field workers. Therefore, safety personnel should focus on minimizing the disparity in perceptions of the two groups and improve safety climate. Besides safety climate, a difference in perceptions of hazards and safety control suggests that field workers need to be involved when designing safety programs. Also, the group of workers who were involved in workplace accidents showed significantly higher hazard perception levels. Finally, the correlational analysis between the variables demonstrated a positive correlation between workers' perceptions of safety control and safety climate. It is expected that the findings of this study provide new insights for future studies seeking to improve the safety performance of the construction industry.