UK construction site safety: discourses of enforcement and engagement

Abstract

Developments in safety management on large UK construction sites have seen a paradigm shift from enforcement-based systems to safety-culture programmes, which seek to engage with the workforce to create fully cooperative and safety-conscious sites. Founded in social constructionism, recent research sought out the master discourses of safety on large UK construction sites through the examination of safety signage, talk around safety and safety documentation. Two of the most prominent discourses of safety on sites were found to be safety as enforcement and safety as engagement, reflecting the change in safety management strategies. These discourses were found to be interrelated in their constructions of safety, yet also varied in their associations with practice, responsibility, social interactions and the management hierarchy of the sites. These findings develop the current understanding of safety found on sites, with relation to the hierarchical structures of safety management and the discourses of enforcement and engagement in practice. The findings have significance for the safety practices of large UK contractors in developing and improving their safety-culture programmes, as well as suggesting potential new directions in the academic research of safety in construction.

Safety and volunteer construction workers

“…This study builds on similar work previously carried out within the commercial construction sector by Sherratt et al (2012Sherratt et al ( , 2013. This work revealed the potential for a social constructionist approach to reveal safety in a meaningful and relevant way, through the discourses around safety found within large UK construction site environments.…”

“…Previous social constructionist work around safety has established some dominant discourses drawn upon by participants with regard to safety in their commercial construction work, including the associations of safety with practice, safety with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and safety invoked as a tool of enforcement or engagement (Sherratt et al 2012(Sherratt et al , 2013. Whilst these discourses also emerged during the analysis carried out for this study, alternative discourses were also drawn upon by the participants that were unique to their voluntary construct context.…”

“…This paper presents early findings of a larger project aiming to explore 'safety' within the context of volunteer construction workers. Utilising a social constructionist methodology this project seeks to examine how such workers socially construct safety on their projects, building upon previous studies of salaried workers, conducted using the same methodology (Sherratt et al 2012(Sherratt et al , 2013. Whilst only preliminary findings are presented here, drawing on two 'case study' groups of volunteers, they are able to demonstrate subtle but significant ways that safety is positioned and used by the volunteer workers within the two groups explored, and enable suggestions to be made towards improved practices amongst volunteer safety management.…”

Social identity, safety climate and self-reported accidents among construction workers

“…Another study found that the social identity of a workgroup among construction workers influenced safety behaviour and safety rules implemented from site management (Andersen et al 2015). Finally, a study revealed several different discourses of safety depending on different organizational levels at a construction site (Sherratt et al 2013). These results underline variations in beliefs, attitudes, behaviour and social identity among sub-groups within the organization at construction sites, and that the lack of acknowledgement of such realities may be barriers for the success of safety programmes.…”

“…This has led researchers and practitioners to focus on organizational and social factors such as social identity (Phua and Rowlinson 2004, Brown and Phua 2011, Sherratt et al 2013, Andersen et al 2015, and group-level safety climate (Zohar 2008 at the construction sites to induce positive safety change. However, previous research has examined safety climate and social identity at constructions sites separately.…”