Enhancing worksite safety: Impact of personnel characteristics and incentives on safety performance

Abstract

The construction industry is responsible for more that 35% of the total number of industrial accidents in Singapore, but adds about 5% to the GDP. There is therefore a need to reduce the number of construction site accidents. This paper investigates the personnel and incentive factors that significantly affect site safety as a previous study has shown that the impact of personnel characteristics and incentives on safety performance is significant; hence, in order to increase worksite safety, the importance of intrinsic behaviour and external incentives cannot be ignored (Teo and Ling, 2006). A questionnaire is designed to collect project-specific safety related data from contractors who undertook construction projects in Singapore. Sixty contractors rated the importance level of specific attributes relating to site safety. The results show that there are many personnel factors that affect site safety. These include: workers and supervisors adopting safe work behaviour and good attitude towards safety; providing them with safety and health training; management adopting safety culture and displaying clear responsibilities towards safety and health promotion; managers and supervisors adopting practices that allow them to have better influence over workers; and a safety committee given clear roles and responsibilities which are understood by all employees. The study finds that punishments and penalties have been used to control site accidents. It is recommended that contractors pay greater attention to personnel factors as these can improve construction safety more significantly than punishments.