Managing psychosocial hazards to protect the mental health of Australia’s construction workers

The mental health of Australia’s construction workers cannot be neglected. The suicide rate for Australian male construction workers was double that of other workers between 2001-19, at 26.6 per 100,000.

And suicide and suicidal behaviour among these workers were estimated to cost $1.57 billion a year, based on the latest available data from 2012.  

Changes to the Work Health and Safety Regulation in various Australian states in 2022-23 require companies, including those in the construction industry, to manage psychosocial hazards and their risks, and introduce appropriate control measures to manage those risks in the workplace.

Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work that can cause psychological or physical harm to a worker. Many construction companies in Australia are grappling with how to manage these hazards in construction projects and what the focus of such management strategies should be.  

The construction industry is male-dominated and physically demanding, with project-based employment and a ‘macho’ culture. This work environment leads to high levels of psychosocial hazards such as role overload, long work hours, tight deadlines and excessive workloads.

While it is commonly believed that long work hours is the most critical risk factor affecting construction workers’ mental health, research conducted by my team at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) established that role overload was not in fact the top psychosocial hazard.

Instead, role conflict, role ambiguity, job insecurity and interpersonal conflict had higher adverse impacts on construction workers’ mental health than role overload. This analysis of 48 published studies with 13,083 construction employees across five continents widens the focus of managing psychosocial hazards beyond work hours.

We also interviewed 33 construction site-based supervisors and construction workers in Australia, finding that psychosocial hazards are interdependent. This pivotal finding changes how the construction industry tackles these hazards, moving away from the checklist model for addressing hazards. Researchers must also note that using the traditional statistical modelling techniques that overlook the inter-dependencies of psychosocial hazards may lead to the ineffective design of mental health supporting strategies.

My team evaluated the interdependence of psychosocial hazards faced by Australian site-based supervisors and construction workers by developing a Bayesian Network Model using machine-learning techniques. This model revealed that poor physical environment, contract pressure and a lack of co-worker support were the root nodes determining the probability of other psychosocial hazards.

The implications of this finding are clear – these three psychosocial hazards have rippling effects on other hazards that affect employees’ mental health. Mitigating them early would substantially reduce the likelihood and impact of other psychosocial hazards.

Many construction companies are facing financial and knowledge constraints to effectively manage psychosocial hazards. This research sheds light on these challenges, with the Bayesian Network Model predicting that only 33 per cent of the construction workers who participated in the questionnaire survey had good mental health.

This modelling establishes scenarios where controlling a single psychosocial hazard would have a very limited impact on improving mental health. However, if construction companies focus on controlling a combination of four such hazards, namely: lack of job control; lack of co-worker support; role conflict; and job insecurity, then the probability of their workforce having good mental health would improve from 33 per cent to 77 per cent.

Another scenario establishes that controlling a poor physical environment in addition to these combined four psychosocial hazards would further increase the probability of their workforce having good mental health to 83 per cent.

Construction companies can now be guided in their strategies to better utilise their resources and mitigate the combined five psychosocial hazards. Such a targeted approach would yield the greatest impact on improving the mental health of their employees.

Psychosocial hazards in the workplace used to be the domain of human resources and have now become a legitimate work health and safety issue that construction companies must take reasonable steps to prevent and manage. They are often invisible, unlike physical hazards, and their impacts on employees’ mental health are also hard to notice.

The model developed by my team has practical takeaways for construction companies to develop focused psychosocial risk-management strategies for their own projects. Companies can explore the potential of using the Bayesian Network Model as a supporting tool to develop targeted strategies for managing psychosocial risk and creating a thriving workplace.