Focusing on wellbeing and mental health will unlock other benefits for construction

Jon Davies is chief executive officer of the Australian Constructors Association (ACA)

Nonetheless, many of the construction industry’s challenges in the UK and Australia are similar, not least the poor statistics when it comes to mental health.

In Australia, construction workers are six times more likely to die from suicide than they are from a workplace incident. UK construction loses a greater proportion of workers to suicide than any other industry.

I recently visited the UK where among other things, I met with the Make It Visible taskforce – an initiative co-steered by the heads of the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity and Mates in Mind.

It is designed to bring together different parts of the industry including contractors, clients and trade bodies to try to improve the terrible record on mental health and improve workplace welfare and wellbeing.

A similar approach has been developed in Australia in recent years and we’re probably around 18 months ahead of where the UK is.

The Culture in Construction initiative from the Australian Constructors Association along with the governments of New South Wales and Victoria and leading workplace researchers, has been working to establish the key ingredients of a sustainable construction industry.

Culture is key to this. And probably the biggest impact on this will be on reducing the number of hours that our workers are on site and providing flexible work options so that they can take the time off that they need.

A lot of trial projects are underway, focusing on how we get to a five-day week. The biggest barrier to this is a perception that it’s somehow going to cost money and delay projects. That’s a fallacy. If people are not fatigued and burnt out they are more productive.

And as well as mental health there are many other benefits. The next generation of workers don’t want to work in an adversarial industry. They don’t want to work 60 hours a week with no workplace flexibility. They don’t want to work in an industry where Excel spreadsheets are still considered the height of technology and they don’t want to work in an industry that doesn’t care about the environment.

If we don’t change we will simply run out of people to do the pipeline of infrastructure work that’s ahead of us to deliver. We’ve already got an incredible shortfall of workers required – Infrastructure Australia recently found we’re short of 200,000 workers to deliver our pipeline of work.

Some people say “oh we’ll just open the borders and they’ll come flying in”. They won’t, because every other major jurisdiction in the world is spending big on infrastructure, so we’ve got to find other ways of addressing that problem. We’ve got to stop people leaving the industry, we’ve got to make it a more attractive place to come into.

Both Culture in Construction and Make It Visible are looking at how wellbeing measures can be introduced into procurement policy. I know some people will have concerns about this, but we are our own worst enemy.

Left to our own devices we happily slit each other’s throats and that’s why we are in this constant cycle to the bottom. Our willingness to price and accept unquantifiable risk is our downfall and we need government’s help to lock up that risk.

And government can also, as the major procurer of infrastructure whether directly as in the UK or indirectly through a number of levels in Australia’s federal system, really shift the dial. Where they lead others will follow.

• Jon Davies is chief executive officer of the Australian Constructors Association (ACA)

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