Abstract
Safety communication among construction workers is fundamental to effective safety management. However, evidence suggests that poor safety communication is a common problem in construction workplaces. In fact, previous research has unveiled a number of systemic barriers to effective safety communication in the construction industry. When workers do not sufficiently communicate relevant safety hazards and appropriate injury prevention measures, unexpected injuries can follow. Therefore, research examining factors that promote or impede effective safety communication is necessary. Towards achieving this goal, the purpose of the current research was to evaluate the effect of safety climate and crew cohesion on the demonstrated safety communication levels. The goal was achieved by gathering empirical data from 57 construction workplaces in the United States. More specifically, the participating construction workplaces were visited, and data pertaining to the safety climate and crew-level cohesion were first collected using questionnaire surveys. Next, a safety communication survey instrument was administered, and the data necessary to compute network density—a social network metric that is indicative of safety communication levels was gathered. The analysis of the data suggested that a positive relationship exists between safety climate and safety communication levels. Likewise, construction crews that demonstrated higher levels of cohesion exhibited superior safety communication levels. Finally, evidence also suggested that a synergetic effect exists between safety climate and crew cohesion in improving safety communication levels.
Highlights
Construction workplaces have consistently reported an unacceptable number of injuries.For example, in the United States, construction workplaces report over 900 fatal incidents every year [1]
The current study examined the role of safety climate and crew-level cohesion on safety communication levels
The gathered data resulted in a unique safety climate score, a unique crewcrew-level cohesion score, and a unique weighted network density score
Summary
In the United States, construction workplaces report over 900 fatal incidents every year [1]. The United States construction workforce experiences more than 200,000 non-fatal injuries each year [2]. Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and others [3,4,5,6] These incidents result in substantial costs, lost productivity, and unnecessary distress to workers and their families [7,8,9]. The importance of effective safety communication in high-risk work environments is discussed in a large body of research [12,13,14,15]. Previous research has discussed the value of safety interactions between workers and their supervisors [17,18,19]. Others have found a negative and statistically significant relationship between the effective exchange of safety information (e.g., safety hazards, safety management practices) among workers and workplace injury rates [13,21]
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