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The authors ask you:
We developed a program targeted at increasing safety communication skills in the construction industry. The primary communication skills targeted were sharing near misses and giving and receiving safety feedback. The program involves three components: training for apprentices, training for foremen and superintendents, and a communication campaign for use in support of the training. The present poster describes the results of our evaluation of the apprentice training program. Overall, we found that the training was effective in improving safety feedback-giving skills and knowledge about receiving safety feedback, as well as dealing with conflict management on the jobsite. Changing attitudes to be more favourable toward sharing and learning from near misses was more difficult, as in most cases attitudes did not significantly change after participating in the training. We conducted a one-year follow-up with participants of the training program to identify key benefits and barriers to transfer of the training content, and this data is currently being analyzed. Our next steps involve evaluating the management-oriented version of the Safe Talk training.
In the last twenty years, the construction industry has seen vast improvements in technical safety practices. Since the advent of OSHA, fatalities and injuries in the industry have decreased. Yet despite these advancements, construction workers still experience fatalities, injuries, and work-related pain on the job. In 2006, there were 1,226 fatal occupational injuries in construction and 412,900 nonfatal injuries and illnesses. The nonfatal injuries and illnesses incidence rate was 5.9 per 100 full-time workers in construction compared to 4.4 per 100 full- time workers in all private industry (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008).
Many researchers now acknowledge that accidents on construction sites cannot simply be explained by lack of safety knowledge in the industry. Increasing attention has been paid to contextual factors like worker attitudes toward safety (Parker, Axtel, & Turner, 2001), leadership support, and top management support for safety (Zohar & Luria, 2003). Researchers have also suggested that factors such as safety communication (Hofmann & Morgeson, 1999) and error communication culture (e.g. Van Dyck, Frese, Baer, & Sonnentag, 2004) affect safety behaviour and outcomes like work-related injuries and pain. However, interventions targeted at how to best increase safety and error communication on the jobsite are still needed. In the present study, we chose to create and evaluate an intervention designed at aiding construction workers in developing safety and error communication skills.
Our program was developed through three years of formative evaluation procedures incorporating multiple stakeholder groups. This process taught us that a systems perspective involving both the worker and contractor level was necessary to increase safety communication skills in the construction industry. As a result, our project formed into three connected interventions: First, Safe Talk is a six-hour training in two parts which is targeted at apprentices in tradesman programs. Safe Talk incorporates group discussion, role playing, and other active learning techniques to teach the skills of giving and receiving safety feedback, sharing near misses, and dealing with anger on the jobsite. Second, Proactive Management is a three-hour training targeted at the foreman level and using group discussion and role play to teach foremen how they can use feedback, positive recognition, and daily verbal exchanges to support safety communication in their crews. Proactive Management also includes a one-hour training for site level supervision, such as superintendents, informing them of the skills foremen are being trained on and providing tips on how they can support foreman transfer of training. Third, a Communication Campaign was developed that contractors participating in Proactive Management can use to help support its affects at the worker level. The campaign involves safety box talk materials, paycheck stuffers, and posters to support the importance of giving and receiving safety feedback and sharing near misses.
Study 1. Forty-two pipefitter and steamfitter apprentices from a UA Local in the northeast participated, with twenty-seven in the treatment group and fifteen in the control group. The treatment group completed pre and post training surveys, while the control group was surveyed at the same time as the treatment post-test. Training effectiveness was assessed based on three hypotheses for attitudes toward errors, knowledge of receiving feedback, and knowledge of anger management: (1) significant mean differences in the desired direction between pretest scores and posttest scores of the treatment group, (2) significant mean differences in the desired direction between posttest scores of the treatment group and control group, and (3) no significant mean differences between pretest scores of treatment group and posttest scores of the control group. We used a series of t-tests for each dependent variable. The results of these analyses indicated significant improvements and large effect sizes for knowledge of receiving feedback and anger management for the treatment group. There was a medium effect size and non-significant difference for error attitudes. In addition, the posttest scores of all three variables for the treatment group were significantly greater compared to the pretest scores for the control group. Finally, there were no significant mean differences between pretest scores for the treatment group and posttest scores of the control group, indicating that the two groups were comparable at the beginning of the training program. Overall, these findings support the effectiveness of the training program in study 1.
Study 2. Forty-eight pipefitter and plumber apprentices from a UA Local in
the northwest participated, with twenty-five in the treatment group and twenty-three
in the control group. A rolling-groups design was used, where the control group
received the training four months after the treatment group. Training effectiveness
was assessed based on five hypotheses for attitudes toward giving feedback and
errors, giving feedback skills, knowledge of receiving feedback, and knowledge
of anger management.
H1: Significant mean differences in the desired direction between pretest scores
and posttest scores of the treatment group.
H2: Significant mean differences between pretest scores of control group and
posttest #2 scores of control group.
H3: Significant mean differences in the desired direction between posttest scores
of the treatment group and posttest #1 scores of control group.
H4: No significant mean differences between pretest scores of treatment group
and posttest #1 scores of control group.
H5: No significant mean differences between posttest #1 and pretest scores of
control group.
As in Study 1, we used a series of t-tests for each dependent variable. The results for Hypotheses 1 and 2 indicated significant improvements from pretest to posttest for giving feedback skills, knowledge of receiving feedback and anger management for the treatment and control group, respectively. Error attitudes also improved significantly from pretest to posttest in the control group. There were non-significant differences for giving feedback and error attitudes in the treatment group and for giving feedback attitudes in the control group. Hypothesis 3 was partially supported by significant differences observed between treatment and control group posttests for giving feedback skills, knowledge of receiving feedback and anger management. In addition, all five outcome variables, except for giving feedback skills, showed no mean differences between treatment pretest and control posttest #1 scores, indicating partial support for Hypothesis 4. Hypothesis 5 was fully supported by the non-significant mean differences between posttest #1 and pretest scores of control group. The above findings support the effectiveness of the training program in Portland.
Based on a series of Repeated Measures ANOVAs, we also found that self-efficacy for conflict management, obliging conflict management style, age, as well as experiences of workplace injuries and pain moderated the effectiveness of the training on some of the outcomes. More specifically, younger trainees and those who had experienced more injuries at work showed larger gains in knowledge about receiving feedback. On the other hand, trainees who reported higher self-efficacy for conflict management prior to the training showed smaller gains in conflict management knowledge. In addition, participants with more obliging conflict management style demonstrated more improvement in their giving feedback skills, compared to those with less obliging style. Last, trainees who had experienced more pain at work showed more positive change in their attitudes toward errors after the training.
Our project provides preliminary evidence that safety communication can be trained. In particular, construction workers can learn new communication skills like giving and receiving safety feedback and conflict management on the jobsite. Persuading participants to change their attitudes toward sharing near misses may be the most difficult objective of such a training, as in most cases the training did not have a significant effect on error communication attitudes. Some individual difference factors, such as trainees’ preferred conflict management style and their experience of work-related pain, may contribute to how readily a trainee changes behaviour after training.
Our next steps involve analyzing the transfer of training data collected from participants, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of the management-oriented version of the Safe Talk training. More research is also needed applying the Safe Talk training to different populations outside of the apprenticeship context as well as other construction trades. Finally, research needs to examine the most effective methods of changing safety communication attitudes.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008).
Hofmann, D. A., & Morgeson, F. P. (1999). Safety-related behavior as a social exchange: The role of perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 286-296.
Parker, S. K., Axtell, C. M., & Turner, N. (2001). Designing a safer workplace: Importance of job autonomy, communication quality, and supportive supervisors. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 6(3), 211-228.
van Dyck, D., Frese, M., Baer, M., & Sonnentag, S. (2005). Organizational Error Management Culture and its Impact on Performance: A two-study replication. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(6), 1228-1240.
Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2003). The use of supervisory practices as leverage to improve safety behavior: A cross-level intervention model. Journal of Safety Research, 34, 567-577.
The findings and conclusions in this poster are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Citations to Web sites external to NIOSH do not constitute NIOSH endorsement of the sponsoring organizations or their programs or products. Furthermore, NIOSH is not responsible for the content of these Web sites.
