Managing through measurement: occupational health and safety in the construction industry
Date
2014
Authors
Schwatka, Natalie V., author
Rosecrance, John, advisor
Gilkey, David, committee member
Brazile, William, committee member
Henry, Kimberly, committee member
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Abstract
The purpose of my dissertation was to describe five original research activities designed to characterize and enhance the health and safety of U.S. construction workers. The sequence of research activities illustrates my focus on occupational health and safety (OHS) measurement methods (i.e., lagging and leading measures), as well as an interest in translating this research into practical methods for industry stakeholders. First, I investigated a vulnerable sub-population of construction workers, the aging workforce, via a literature review and analysis of workers' compensation (WC) data. Through the results of these studies, I found that aging workers may have a different OHS experience than younger workers (e.g., greater lost work time costs), but the frequency and cost of injuries and illnesses was high regardless of worker age. Furthermore, in the cost regression models, the age of the claimant only accounted for a small amount of variance, which suggests that other factors influence the cost of a WC claim (e.g., organizational factors such as safety climate). Second, I investigated safety climate measurement methods, and translated prior safety climate research into an intervention for construction site supervisors. I demonstrated that safety climate could be measured via worker perceptions of top management, supervisor, and co-workers' response to safety on the job. Furthermore, a supervisor workshop focused on safety climate concepts could improve the safety participation behaviors of supervisors, and their crew members. Together, my findings demonstrate that both lagging and leading measures are valuable indicators of safety performance. Lagging measures such as WC data may serve as motivators for contractors to make decisions regarding safety. Leading measures such as safety climate and safety behaviors may also be useful, because we can use them to identify hazards and their associated risks before they result in serious negative outcomes. Since it was beyond the scope of my dissertation to measure both lagging and leading measures simultaneously, it is important for future research to evaluate the predictive validity of these measures of OHS.
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Subject
aging workforce
leadership
occupational safety
safety climate
training
workers' compensation