Safety Performance of Native and Migrant Employees on Construction Sites

Transcription

1 Safety Performance of Native and Migrant Employees on Construction Sites Choudhry, R.M. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan ( s: or Fang, D. School of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China ( Abstract Construction is one of the most hazardous industries and good management of health and safety on construction projects can have a beneficial affect on employees. Understanding the safety culture of construction sites and perceptions of the employees are important factors in assessing safety needs. The objective of this research was to compare perceived safety performance of native and foreign employees working on construction sites that would enhance safety culture and positively impact safety performance of the organization. A questionnaire survey was conducted on the construction sites of a leading construction company. Questionnaires were distributed on 22 construction projects and the response rate was excellent, resulting in 1,120 valid questionnaires was analyzed. The analysis indicated that better safety performance was perceived by native employees as compared to foreign employees. Further results indicated that exhibiting compliance to safety procedures was higher among foreign employees compared with native employees. The findings of this study might be useful for project managers and safety practitioners who have employed both native and foreign employees and desire to improve safety performance on construction sites. Keywords: construction safety, safety perceptions, native employee, foreign employee, safety performance 129

2 1. Introduction To employ migrant workers in construction is a world-wide phenomenon which can be seen on almost all construction sites in the developed world. HSE (2006) has investigated whether migrant workers puts their health and safety at increased risk in comparison with other workers in similar positions. The findings revealed that migrants are more likely to be working in occupations where there are existing health and safety concerns and that it is their status as new workers that place them at added risk due to their relatively short periods of work and limited knowledge of the UK s health and safety systems. The study reveals that migrants are premised on earning as much as possible in the shortest possible time which, add to their risk factors and that limited means of communication between migrant workers and indigenous supervisors place these workers at greater risk. In China, construction workers are farm workers who migrate to large cities to earn cash on construction sites (Choudhry et al. 2008a). Generally, workers enter construction sites because they have few other alternatives. In Hong Kong, many construction workers are immigrants from the Mainland China. Construction is a hard, difficult and unattractive job for many Hong Kong s native workers (Choudhry et al. 2008a). The Hong Kong territory does not possess enough agriculture land and continuously lacks construction labour. It is common practice that Mainland workers carry out construction works in Hong Kong on a daily or weekly basis. Rowlinson (2003) revealed that many of these workers have a low level of education and the majority has little or no training in a trade. In Hong Kong, however, there are construction workers from other countries that include India, Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia to mention a few. Gammon Construction Limited (GCL) hereinafter called the company is a well-established construction firm and a market leader in the Hong Kong construction industry (HKCI). Most of the labour force of the company is Chinese but the company also employs foreign workers. The company has implemented good safety, health and environment management systems on all of its construction sites. The company s accident rate is lower than that of the Hong Kong construction industry (Choudhry et al. 2008a). The company s safety management system is based on OHSAS (Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series) and FIUO (Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance Chapter 59 and 509) (Choudhry et al. 2008b). The concept of safety culture is highly valued within the company and management believes that a positive safety climate is helpful for improving safety performance. The company wanted to know about safety performance of native and foreign employees. Thus, the main objective of this research was to compare perceived safety performance of natives and foreign employees working on the construction sites. Few studies have compared the safety perceptions of different ethnic groups of workers. Studies to date (e.g. Zohor 1980; Mohamed 2002; Fang et al. 2006) have focused on identifying a set of safety climate factors. This research makes a unique contribution to safety studies to date by focusing on the safety perceptions and comparing the perceived safety performance of native and foreign employees working on construction projects. Thus, the perceived safety performance of local and foreign employees is compared in this research. 130

3 2. Literature Review Globalization is becoming an inescapable fact when it is no longer a good idea for governments to legislate in isolation. Changes that once only affected one country s population now have far reaching consequences when workers are able to find out work through internet agencies and travel to different countries at a relatively low cost (Bust et al. 2008). Together with the growing international activity in construction, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of better understanding of cross-cultural management (Torrance, 2004). Langford (2000) revealed that culture frames the way in which we express ourselves and we express ourselves in a number of ways: verbally what we say; paraverbally how we say it; nonverbal body language; and through action doing things consciously or unconsciously in a particular ways. People from different nationalities and ethnic groups express themselves and understand the behaviours of others in different ways, which are informed by specific sets of cultural knowledge and conventions (Bust et al. 2008). A cross-cultural misunderstanding can lead to health and safety problems. Research on construction safety in Kuwait (Kartam et al. 2000) reported that there was an extensive use of foreign labour; that different labour cultures and traditions reflect on human relations, different work habits and communication problems; and the workers were emotionally vulnerable and preoccupied with their problems. All these factors affected the concentration of the workers and consequently contributed to mistakes. In the pre-context of cultural issues it is interesting to investigate safety performance of native and foreign employees working on the construction sites. Safety performance measurement techniques can be categorized into statistical measures, behavioural measures, periodic safety audits, and a balanced scorecard approach. The behavioural approach, safety audits, and balanced scorecard require a relatively long period of time to set up and are not easy to measure by the use of a questionnaire survey (Chan et al. 2005). Measurement of workers perceptions of safety performance requires respondents to judge the safety of their own construction sites. Nevertheless, the reliability of workers perceptions of safety performance of a construction project can present a problem in small samples because different respondents from the same construction site may have different perceptions of safety performance. This problem can be solved by using a large sample size as a prerequisite for maintaining statistical validity. 3. Research Method From the literature review, an understanding was developed concerning the concepts of safety climate and safety performance. Potential safety attributes affecting safety performance at the company s construction sites were identified. Questionnaires were used to capture employee perceptions to identify areas of safety that require improvement. Eight items questionnaire was designed for this research to investigate safety perceptions of native and foreign employees working on construction sites. For the purpose of this research, respondent having origin from Mainland China and Hong Kong were both considered native. Respondents from all other countries were considered foreigners or migrants. Twenty-two construction projects in Hong Kong were selected for the target sample. All these construction sites are the projects of a company whose annual revenue was approximately 131

4 US$1billion and the company employs more than 2,500 full-time staff. A pilot study was carried out on construction sites to check the reliability, validity and usefulness of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was examined for content validity, structural validity and offensiveness of the language. They were asked to comment on if there is any overlapping of the wording or statements. Their feedback was used to refine the questionnaire and delete the unacceptable wording. Thus the questionnaire measured what it was supposed to. The questionnaire was purposely designed to seek views of respondents on key aspects of safety performance on construction sites. The questionnaires were prepared both in English and Chinese versions. The questionnaire in its final form consisted of 8 statements about safety issues and consisted of two parts. The first part of the questionnaire related to the respondents general information. The questions included respondent s project name, name of the company, ethnicity, e.g. whether a respondent is a local or foreigner? Further questions included the respondent s job information, i.e. is he/she a worker, a clerical staff, supervisor or a manager? The second part consisted of three questions. First question (see Table 1) measured respondents perception of evaluating safety management for the surveyed projects. Table 1: Safety Performance Please tick the appropriate number to indicate your level of agreement for safety performance. Q1. How do you evaluate the safety and health management of your site? Poor Marginal Average Good Excellent (10%) (30%) (50%) (70%) (90%) The other two questions (see Table 2) measured respondents perception of compliance with safety procedures. Respondents were asked to indicate, on average, the percentage of time they and their coworkers follow all of the safety procedures for the job they perform. Table 2: Compliance with Safety Procedures Please tick the appropriate number to indicate your level of agreement for safety performance. Q2. I follow all of the safety procedures for the jobs that I perform Q3. My co-workers follow all of the safety procedures for the jobs that they perform. On a scale of 0-100%, please indicate, on average the percentage of time Data were collected on 22 construction projects of a large construction company based in Hong Kong. In total 1,500 hard copy questionnaires were distributed randomly to a population of approximately 2,250 individuals. The response rate was excellent (86.3%) and 1,294 questionnaires were collected from the 22 construction sites. The questionnaires, which were completed by unclassified categories, such as clerical staff, were discarded and considered invalid to prevent a distortion of the results from 132

5 the data set. The sample size for the data analysis was thus reduced from 1,294 to 1120 called the valid sample or sample. Nonetheless, the sample is very large as compared with the population. Additionally, it is a random sample where each individual have the same chance as every other individual of being selected. Further, to check and avoid the problem of bias, it was decided to interview at least one employee working on each project of the company and thus 22 interviews were conducted to investigate compliance with the methodology. 4. Results of Research The safety performance perceptions of native employees were compared with their foreign counterparts. The outcome may be of interest to those multi-national companies who are employing workers from various countries. The respondents were asked to evaluate the safety and health management at their site against any one of the following measures i.e. 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, or 90%. From 1,120 respondents, 1089 were native employees and only 31 were foreigners. The results are presented in Table 3. The result shows that native respondents perceive safety management at their site to be slightly better 63.77% as compared with foreign (62.26%) respondents. Table 3: Comparison of Safety Performance between Native and Foreign Respondent Description Local Foreigner All Respondents 1, ,120 Results 63.77% 62.26% 63.73% Another comparison was made between native and foreign respondents answers to questions requiring them to indicate on a scale of 0 (zero) to 100%, the percentage of time: (1) I follow all of the safety procedures for the jobs that I perform; (2) My co-workers follow all of the safety procedures for the jobs that they perform. The results are presented in Table 4. The results show that foreigner employees perceived a higher level of compliance with safety procedures (78.39%) as compared with the local respondents (73.06%) on construction sites. Nonetheless, if the results are compared between Q2 and Q3 i.e. between the respondent and co-workers, similar trends can be seen among native and foreign employees. Table 4: Comparison of Compliance with Safety Procedures between Native and Foreigner Description Respondents Compliance with Safety Procedures Local Foreigner All Respondents 1, ,120 I follow all of the safety procedures for the jobs that I perform (Q2) 73.06% 78.39% 73.21% My co-workers follow all of the safety procedures for the jobs that they perform (Q3) 63.98% 65.32% 64.02% 133

6 5. Discussion Results have shown that native employees perceived that safety has been managed in a better way as compared with foreign employees. The score was 63.77% for the natives and foreigners score was 62.26%. The authors postulate that the natives were implementing and monitoring the safety procedures on the construction projects. In this case, they are in majority and being having better ownership, they perceived better safety performance. Their score is little bit higher as compared to that of foreigners while foreigners were cautious. Additionally, results show that exhibiting compliance to safety procedures were perceived higher among foreign employees as compared with native employees. Foreigners got the score of 78.39% and natives got 73.06% for question Q2. For question Q3, foreigner and natives scores were 65.32% and 63.98% respectively. Again, the results showed that foreigners perceived a higher level of compliance with safety procedures. These results are in line with Rowlinson (2003 p.170) that the accident rate for the imported labour on airport platform was less than that for the local labour. For this study, however, only 31 responses were received from foreigners as compared with 1,089 native respondents. A sample having more foreign employees may be considered for such a comparative study in future. We also suggest that a larger sample from different companies may be investigated such that results between safety performance of natives and foreign employees could be compared and broader conclusion could be arrived at. 6. Conclusion The objective of this paper was to compare perceived safety performance of natives versus foreign employees in construction site environments that would improve safety culture and positively impact safety performance of the firm. A survey was conducted by distributing the questionnaire on 22 construction projects and the responses were analyzed. Results discussed in this study included that better safety management was perceived by native employees compared to foreign employees. The results indicated that exhibiting compliance to safety procedures among foreign employees was higher compared with local employees in the company in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the objectives were company specific. The results are based on the 22 projects of a company and are applicable to the firm only. The findings of this study might be useful for project managers and safety practitioners who desire to improve safety performance of employees employed from different countries. References Bust P D, Gibb A G, Pink S (2008) Managing construction health and safety: Migrant workers and communicating safety messages. Safety Science 46:

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