Lederes sikkerhedspraksis og betydning for forbedret sikkerhed og sikkerhedsklima på byggepladser: Slutrapport til Arbejdsmiljøforskningsfonden (Projekt 21‐2016‐03)

Employees in the construction industry continue to be a vulnerable group with a high risk of occupational accidents, physical deterioration and early retirement. Previous intervention projects on construction sites in Denmark have investigated the effect of individual coaching of foremen, safety coordinators, communication training for foremen and workshops for work crews and their safety groups. The purpose of this report is to describe results and products from both a PhD project and a main project on leader-based measures to improve safety communication, safety level and safety climate on three construction sites. The project started in 2016, but was interrupted and redefined due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The PhD project is based on three studies focusing on how construction site leaders (e.g. managers) integrate safety into their daily operational activities, and the tensions they encounter in their pursuit of meeting conflicting goals and requirements. The first study shows that the leaders are able to bridge (apparently) conflicting demands in their work by making use of their professional judgment in the actual work. The second study sheds light on how the leaders position themselves as successful leaders, thereby showing the leaders' motivation for occupational safety and health management. However, it also shows that leaders can have difficulty combining conflicting identities, and that they “bend” the identities they carry around, and adapt them to the specific situation in order to solve a particular safety problem. The third study shows that leaders and employees "negotiate safety" by "complaining", and that safety problems can be a "safe space" for professional disagreement. The three studies illustrate the importance of going beyond the "either-or" understanding of safety, i.e. either safety or production or quality, and shows that it is possible for leaders to integrate safety with other organizational goals. The PhD project thus advocates for a complementary "both-and" OSH management strategy, which is the entire basis for being able to integrate OSH with other organizational goals. In order to further develop OSH management within the construction industry towards more dynamic and flexible approaches, leaders and employees may need to be able to handle safety using more creative solutions, and in some cases less rule-based solutions.

The main project tested an adapted safety communication, planning and training program (hereafter "Toolbox training"), and weekly coaching, feedback and status of the safety work were given to the work crew leaders (foremen and work crew bosses). An adapted two-hour version of the "Toolbox training" workshop was given to the leaders and engineers who worked on the three construction sites. In addition, the main leaders on the sites received coaching and feedback. Data were collected weekly for five to six weeks before and after the workshop in the form of communication about safety between crew members and their immediate supervisor (n = 844 mini-interviews), safety climate (n = 67 respondents), and by systematic observations of safety conditions and behaviour on the sites (n = 7122 observations). The intervention part of the project was not implemented as intended, as it was not possible to achieve the necessary prerequisites for effective Toolbox training on the three sites. This includes, among other things, that the necessary prerequisites for the construction site leaders' practical OSH responsibilities and obligations were not present.

On the basis of the project's results and practical experience, six "inspiration sheets" were developed for leaders on construction sites, with concrete proposals to start discussions about the prevention of the most frequent occupational accidents in construction, as well as the safety of apprentices and learning from occupational accidents. In addition, at the start of the COVID-19 shutdowns and gradual re-openings, the project developed a COVID-19 safety round template, which was published in 2020.