Abstract
COVID-19 has created or amplified economic and social crises internationally. Australia entered its first recession in 30 years and saw a significant rise in unemployment. In response, Australian governments have increased their commitments to infrastructure construction to stimulate the national economy and combined this with new social procurement policies that aim to create social value for targeted populations like Indigenous peoples and unemployed youth. However, emerging social procurement research in construction shows a disconnect between policymakers and the practitioners who must implement them. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical and practical insights on creating social value in the context of construction employment created by new social procurement policies. Reporting a survey of 107 construction workers in Australia, it is shown that social procurement policies and construction employers can create social value when they provide work benefits like adequate pay and training and development and cultural benefits like inclusive workplaces. Recommendations are made to demonstrate how the results presented in this article can be used by contractors to create social value. This research is significant for advising how increased infrastructure spending commitments in Australia can create social and economic outcomes for workers, ensuring a sustainable recovery from COVID-19 crises.
Highlights
Published: 19 January 2021The year 2020 saw the magnification of existing complex issues in societies globally.Australia was placed into its first recession in 30 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic [1]
This paper focuses on the social value created by construction employment because the large infrastructure projects committed by Australian governments are expected to create several thousand jobs, as the above references indicate
Supporting Bae et al [67], who found that clear communication and a sense of belonging were values important to American construction workers which leads to greater employee retention when those values are present in the workplace, these findings indicate that clear communication and a sense of belonging are important to creating social value in construction employment
Summary
Published: 19 January 2021The year 2020 saw the magnification of existing complex issues in societies globally.Australia was placed into its first recession in 30 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. COVID-19 has created significant adverse social and economic impacts, on vulnerable Australians like the long-term unemployed [4]. As several authors have noted, COVID-19 has forced societies globally to develop new social practices and ways of living, such as working from home, social distancing, and self-isolation [6,7]. These changes have occurred at the same time as significant job losses as economies are impacted by the large numbers of job losses that have occurred
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