Report on Encourage Health and Safety in Construction Industry

How to Encourage Health and Safety Participation Within The Construction Industry,
Challenges And Solutions In The U.K.
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Abstract
The study has focused on the factors which will be able to encourage health and safety
participation within the construction industry, along with the barriers and solutions for the same
in the UK. This study will also able to highlight the challenges and suggest concepts for the
continuous improvement. The main research results will be based on Quantitative data analysis
by conduction of a research survey and respondents belonging to various construction companies
based in U.K. The main findings from the study has been able to state that the key factors for
motivating health and safety practices in the workplace is seen in terms of maintaining an overall
safety culture in the construction industries has been discerned as the most contributing factor for
health and safety practices in the workplace. This has been evident with a total agreement of 31
responses. In addition to this, maintaining an overall safety culture in the construction industries
has been discerned as participation of the workforce in the safety activities. This has been
evident with a total agreement of 21 responses. Along with the quantitative analysis, the research
has also undertaken a qualitative analysis of the evidences by interviewing the operation
managers of four construction companies (two public companies and two private companies) in
the country. The key challenges of the factors chosen for affecting the health and safety practices
in construction companies had been depicted in form Worker attitudes, Staff do not understand
the problems/risks at work, Lack of workers participation in the health and safety process,
Organization resistance to change and Lack of Safety culture. Among the several types of the
identified methods the most significant barrier in implementing the health and safety practices in
the workplace is evident with staff does not understand the problems/risks at work. This has been
evident with a total response of 23 people.

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................7
1.1 Statement of the Research Problem.....................................................................................10
1.2 Theoretical Rationale...........................................................................................................10
1.3 Research Questions..............................................................................................................11
1.4 Research Hypothesis............................................................................................................11
1.5 Structure of the Dissertation:...............................................................................................12
Chapter 2: Literature Review.........................................................................................................12
2.1 Definition of health and safety in workplace.......................................................................13
2.2 Problems of Workplace Hazards: Construction Industry....................................................14
2.3 Health and Safety Issues in construction industry: United Kingdom..................................16
2.4 Factors contributing to the accidents in the construction sites in United Kingdom............20
2.5 Health and Safety Regulations in UK..................................................................................22
2.6 Health and Safety Regulations and Standards in construction sector: UK..........................24
2.7 Worker Participation............................................................................................................26
2.8 Health and Safety Programs: Importance of participation of the employees......................28
2.9 Factors Encouraging health and safety participation in construction industry....................29
2.10 Barriers for implementing the health and safety practices................................................32
Chapter 3: Research Methodology................................................................................................33
3.1 Introduction to the data collection.......................................................................................33

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3.2 Data Sampling Method........................................................................................................34
3.3 Research Approach..............................................................................................................34
3.4 Data collection Method............................................................................................................36
3.5 Questionnaire Design...........................................................................................................37
3.6 Dependent Variable 1..........................................................................................................42
3.7 Data Analysis Method.........................................................................................................43
3.8 Ethical Considerations.........................................................................................................43
Chapter 4: Finding and Analysis...................................................................................................44
4.1 Primary Data Analysis.........................................................................................................44
4.2 Secondary Data Analysis.....................................................................................................59
4.3 Qualitative Analysis.............................................................................................................60
Chapter 5: Discussion....................................................................................................................69
5.1 Demographic Profile............................................................................................................69
5.2 Initiative taken by senior management in demonstrating its commitment..........................69
5.3 Skills conducive in improving health and safety attitudes among the workforce...............70
5.4 Key barrier for implementing the health and safety practices in the workplace.................70
5.5 Key Factors for motivating health and safety practices in the workplace...........................71
5.6 Rating of Proactive incentive vs. Punitive Practices...........................................................71
5.7 Rationale for Punitive Practices...........................................................................................72
5.8 Frequency of workplace accidents going unreported..........................................................72

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5.9 Incidences of safety inspectors being misled about the conditions in the workplace.........72
5.10 Perception of the workers taking health & safety seriously..............................................73
5.11 Present standings of OSHA for the safety of the state and health agency's performance. 73
Chapter 6: Conclusions and Recommendations............................................................................73
References......................................................................................................................................75

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Gender profile of the respondents..................................................................................23
Figure 2: Age of the respondents...................................................................................................24
Figure 3: Place of Origin...............................................................................................................25
Figure 4: Initiative taken by senior management in demonstrating its commitment...........26
Figure 5: Skills to improve health and safety attitudes amount the workforce.............................27
Figure 6: Key barriers in implementing health and safety practices in workplace 28
Figure 7: Key Factors for motivating health and safety practices in the workplace.....................29
Figure 8: Rating of Proactive incentive vs. Punitive Practices......................................................31
Figure 9: Rationale for Punitive Practices.....................................................................................32
Figure 10: Frequency of workplace accidents going unreported...................................................33
Figure 11: Incidences of safety inspectors being misled about the conditions in the workplace. .34
Figure 12: Perception of the workers taking health & safety seriously.........................................35
Figure 13: Present standings of OSHA for the safety of the state and health agency's performance
.......................................................................................................................................................36

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Chapter 1: Introduction
In the contemporary business world, owing to the presence of continually increasing
competitiveness in the industries, in global economic framework, it is of utmost importance of
the companies to monitor and maintain their productive assets in an efficient way such that it
contributes to their long-term sustainability and profitability. Given this scenario, it can be
asserted that the greatest assets of any company or employer is the employee base of that
company as none of the commercial operations can be done without the presence of a loyal,
productive, dedicated and efficient employee base (Holt and Allen 2015). Thus, it is of utmost
importance for the employers to ensure safety and quality health conditions of the employees
in the workplaces. This is in the recent times known as the Occupational Safety and
Health (OSH) or Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) and is considered one of the issues of
concern in the global corporate scenario.
The establishment of the health and safety program in the job is identified as one of the
most effective ways for the protection of the values asset. It has been further seen that the risk of
losing the employees due to illness, injury even for a short duration of time contributes
significantly to the ill performance of the concerned companies and have negative
implementations on their profitability. This may also lead to severe amount of disruption in the
workflow and cost (Schaufeli and Taris 2014). Thus, implementations of strategies and programs
to improve and ensure higher safety and better health of the employees in the workplace has
emerged as one of the primary requirements on part of the companies and the employers. The
same is expected to have immense implications on the welfare of the workers as well as the long
run sustainability and welfare of the firms themselves. Health safety and health programs is seen

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to foster a greater sense proactive approach for fixing and finding of the hazards in the job site
before they lead to any sort of injury. Employers, in the contemporary periods are seen to be
becoming more and more aware of the need for the presence of a work environment facilitating
and developing a health and competent work force (Brauer 2016). They are seen to implement
the health and safety program for resolving the different issues related to health and safety of the
employees and the overall work conditions, before these issues even take place.
This is especially true for the construction sector of any country. This is primarily
because the construction industry involves a huge amount of physical labor and the nature of the
tasks performed by most of the employees in this sector is risky and may cause health and safety
issues to the employees if proper precautionary actions are not taken in this aspect. The
construction sector being one of the predominant sectors in the United Kingdom, contributing
significantly to the Gross Domestic Product of the country and employee a large number of
people, ensuring proper health and safety measures are of utmost importance on part of the firms
in this in industry (Salvendy 2012).
This is done with EU-OSHA (“Occupational Safety and Health Administration”) and
different types of “Voluntary Protection Programs” (VPP). The different types of the EU-OSHA
in U.K. have been further discerned with the “Safety and Health Achievement Recognition
Program” (SHARP) for the small and medium sized construction companies (Jaafar et al. 2015).
Some of the various types of the new recommendations system have been identified with the
implementation of the new construction techniques, materials and equipments, which are
common in the use. The greater form of the diversity has been seen with the workforce involved
with the construction activity, which means that the people from the different types of the
backgrounds are able to work together speaking different languages. The aging nature of the