A Study on the factors affecting safety behavior of construction workers

Abstract

Construction industry, being one of the most injury-prone industries worldwide in terms of serious injuries, lost work time, hospitalization, disability, and mortality, is in a great need to improve occupational safety. Behavior Based Safety (BBS) is an approach that can be applied successfully in managing occupational safety; it is gaining more interest across industry sectors globally,and has the great advantage of needing the involvement of the individual employee. This paper therefore aimed to investigate the factors governing construction workers’ safety behaviorThe factors affecting construction workers’ safety behaviorwere identified through a comprehensive literature survey. Expert interviews were conducted in order to validate and generalize the factors found in literature,to the Sri Lankan context.Two categories of factors were basically identified which affect the safety behaviorof construction workers, namely personal and organizational. The personal factors included age, marital status, education level, working experience, having dependents, and safety knowledge. Study indicated that personal factors such as habits and social life might also have an impact on a workers safety behavioryet need longitudinal research before generalizing to a particular context. Organizational factors identified were management commitment, OSH systems and feedback mechanisms, continuous monitoring of these systems, training and awareness for workers, accidents reporting, and workforce empowerment. The findings of this research were modeled in a model of construction workers’ safety behavior.Findings of this study can be used in enhancing the safety performance of the construction industry