It’s good to talk

Your safety management system is bullet proof, your site audits consistently score above 90%, but your workers are still suffering accidents. What can you do?

Conventional wisdom dictates that your next move would be to implement a behavioural safety programme. But although it is seen as the ‘last piece of the jigsaw’ which will move the industry beyond its current accident plateau, this approach concentrates on the unsafe act and misses any up-stream management and design issues.

A better step could be to look at the way you engage with your workers on safety issues. Although this is already a statutory requirement, and part of most behavioural safety programmes, the HSE believes it should be given more prominence. It will feature in the new CDM regulations and is now a priority for inspectors.

The HSE’s construction division funded a 12-month £96,000 research project from Glasgow Caledonian University’s School of the Built and Natural Environment to test different forms of worker engagement. Our findings show what works and what doesn’t and highlights a need for more soft skills training for site managers.

Behavioural safety may be the latest thing for all the major contractors, but the trade unions don't like it and you can see why.

This approach is all about instilling in workers the idea that they are responsible for their own actions. It involves board members regularly visiting sites and telling workers: “Please think about what you are doing, I want you to go home to your wife and children today.”

All well and good, but consider this scenario: a plumber is joining copper pipes. An observer notes that he is complying with the hot-works permit to work: warning signs are displayed, combustible materials are isolated. All is well. But the observer is completely oblivious to the option of replacing the hot-works process altogether by specifying push-fit connections, something of which the plumber is probably well aware. But no one has asked him.

The research team wanted to ground their study in a traditionally difficult and challenging sector, rather than report on mega projects where safety is generally better. The guinea pigs were small contractors working on eight refurbishment projects for the Royal Bank of Scotland, a programme managed by Mace.

Different approaches

Four different approaches were tried on nine sites: pre-task briefings with feedback cards for any issues workers wish to raise; suggestion boxes with comments being fed into safety circle discussions; informal methods where either the site manager or a worker “safety champion” walked the site discussing safety issues and kept a diary; the traditional route of safety reps and health and safety committee.

The last of the four methods was difficult to test, since no workers volunteered as a safety representative. The researchers had to go to another contractor who was already training a worker as a safety rep.

All of the different routes were used to generate an action list to record issues raised and track whether they had been closed out satisfactorily.

A big message to emerge from this study was “person not paper”. Responses were poor when workers were asked to write things down – with the pre-task briefing and worker feedback card route, only three cards came in, two of which referred to the condition of the toilets. The suggestion boxes, trialed on two sites, remained totally empty. One worker commented: “I see the site foreman every day, I don’t need to fill a form in to tell him something.”

The informal approach where site managers incorporated safety discussions in their daily routine worked well. Issues raised included suspicious-looking wiring in a wall, feedback on vibrating hand tools and difficulties in using new equipment. On other sites the site managers recorded comments in a diary, although the workers who took on the safety champion role were reluctant to write comments down.

Those sites where more than half of the sampled workers had received formal health and safety training recorded more meaningful discussions than the others. As an example, where engagement has poor scope and depth, workers might raise a problem with lack of toilet rolls, whereas on a site with greater scope and depth they might put forward a suggestion to change a shutter design in order to improve access.

Workers on all but two of the sites, which were measured against control sites where no action was taken, felt that they had better health and safety information and that worker engagement had been improved after the new systems had been trialed.

Negative attitude

Of the two sites which showed a poor response to the interventions, one was due to sub-contracted workers displaying a negative attitude, the other was down to a negative site manager. This shows how things can go wrong if only a few people don’t buy into the idea.

To encourage workers out of their shells, site managers need good presentation and communication skills, and they need to win people’s trust. The best way to do that is to action requests or at least give them an answer. A good approach would be to display an action list with named individuals and target dates on a site notice board.

The HSE’s chief inspector of construction Stephen Williams says worker engagement is now a top priority for inspectors. Danny Carrigan, an HSC commissioner and trade unionist, has also given his full support to the Caledonian researchers who are setting up a worker engagement knowledge club.

Gordon Crick, the HSE construction division’s champion for the worker engagement initiative, has used the findings of the research to rewrite the section on worker views in the revised CDM Regulations which are due to come into force in April. The emphasis is on face-to-face informal communication rather than reams of paperwork.

So what will the inspector find when he comes calling to your site? You may have a policy on worker engagement, but if it is merely lip service it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. Forget feedback cards if the comments are few and only about dirty toilets. And be prepared to prove that you are acting on your workers’ concerns. 

The work on worker engagement is part of a wider strategy by the Caledonian University researchers, who are now investigating superior performance in relation to OSH professionals, funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety & Health. They have produced a template for a worker engagement action plan and are creating a worker engagement knowledge club. Contact Billy Hare at b.hare@gcal.ac.uk or 0141 3313908 for an action plan template. The report An Investigation of Approaches to Worker Engagement by Dr Iain Cameron, Dr Billy Hare, Dr Roy Duff and Professor Bill Maloney (phD) will be published by the HSE (RR516), but Dr Hare can provide you with an early copy on receipt of your action plan.