Utilising a safety culture management approach in the Australian construction industry

New innovations in health and safety management are required to further reduce injuries and fatalities in the Australian construction industry. Current approaches to safety management emphasise hazard identification and reduction, but fail to fully account for a worker’s motivation to behave safely. In order to understand and improve safety motivation, many researchers and practitioners are utilising the construct of safety culture. Unfortunately, the transitory nature of work within the industry frequently hinders an organisation’s attempts to develop and maintain a good safety culture. Hence, a framework is needed to facilitate the formation of a good safety culture across the construction industry as a whole. A proposal is advanced as to how culture change can be facilitated by using a system of competencies developed and applied to the key safety roles within the industry. This set of nationally standardised and accepted competencies would specifically state what is required by those who have safety critical roles, to positively influence construction site safety culture. By encouraging organisations to integrate these competencies into their existing HRM processes such as selection, training and performance management, it should be possible to (1) educate the industry as to best practice in safety culture management, (2) provide a safety culture management system that allows a good safety culture to be built quickly on new projects, (3) ensure a standard level of competency within the workforce to allow for ease of movement of workers between sites and contractors, and (4) improve safety culture and in turn potentially improve safety on-site.