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Abstract
Background Owing to high injury rates, safety interventions are needed in the construction industry. Evidence-based interventions tailored to this industry are, however, scarce. Leader-based safety interventions have proven more effective than worker-based interventions in other industries.
Objective To test a leader-based safety intervention for construction sites. The intervention consists of encouraging safety coordinators to provide feedback on work safety to the client and line management. The intention is to increase communication and interactions regarding safety within the line management and between the client and the senior management. It is hypothesised that this, in turn, will lead to increased communication and interaction about safety between management and coworkers as well as an increased on-site safety level.
Setting A group-randomised double-blinded case study of six Danish construction sites (three intervention sites and three control sites). The recruitment of the construction sites is performed continuously from January 2010 to June 2010. The investigation of each site lasts 20 continuous weeks.
Methods Confirmatory statistical analysis is used to test if the safety level increased, and if the probability of safety communications between management and coworkers increases as a consequence of the intervention. The data collection will be blinded. Qualitative methods are used to evaluate if communication and interactions about safety at all managerial levels, including the client, increase.
Outcome measures (1) The proportion of safety-related communications out of all studied communications between management and coworkers. (2) The safety level index of the construction sites.
- Occupational safety
- Construction industry
- Intervention study
- Management
- Safety communication
- Group randomised double blinded case study
- Occupational
Statistics from Altmetric.com
- Occupational safety
- Construction industry
- Intervention study
- Management
- Safety communication
- Group randomised double blinded case study
- Occupational
Introduction
Construction industries worldwide continue to suffer from high injury rates, and effective safety interventions are therefore needed1–3. Evidence-based interventions tailored to this industry are, however, scarce.4 Disregard of precautionary safety measures at construction sites is partly due to the dynamic character of construction processes, which often have a low degree of formalisation. The various actors involved are often separated in time and space, and a chasm is often found between the formal safety policy and daily safety practices.5 Each individual must balance considerations of safety against considerations of production progress.6 7 Furthermore, it has been proposed that a pronounced organisational division of production and safety is a considerable cultural obstacle to increased safety interactions between management and employees,8–10 because management considers production and planning as their primary task. This again might influence the possibility of affecting safety in a positive way.11–15
There is evidence that lack of support and focus on safety by senior management at construction sites limits the effect of safety initiatives.9 16 This is particularly the case when construction site management is predominantly assessed by upper management in relation to production and time and less in relation to safety.13 17 Intervention strategies influencing social norms and culture are more effective in changing safety behaviour than strategies influencing individuals only.18 19 In organisations, the social norms and cultures among work teams are most effectively influenced by the leaders, as they serve as role models for the workers' safety behaviour.20 21 At the same time leaders convey perceived organisational support for safe behaviour. Leader-based interventions are thus considered to have a much stronger influence on safety behaviour than interventions directed towards the shop-floor.20
The term leader-based safety intervention used in this study refers to interventions that modify leaders' role perceptions and safety practices in order to accomplish behavioural changes among construction site workers. The modification of leaders' safety practices is achieved by using goal setting and performance feedback. Positive feedback has shown strong influence on human behaviour, including safe behaviour at work.13 22–24 In the construction industry, the traditional approach to safety behaviour modification has focused mainly on workers. In the present project, we extend this approach, by providing positive feedback to line management and thus integrating safety matters with leaders' daily practices.
According to the Danish Work Environment Act, the client is the juridical or physical person/entity on whose account construction work is carried out,25 and the client is the only one who follows the entire construction project from its conception to final operation. Further, European Union Laws and Danish Laws ascribe to the client the overall responsibility for the safety of a construction site.18 The client is thus a crucial part of the organisational support for on-site safety, and should therefore receive safety performance feedback, too.
In the present project, it is the on-site safety coordinator who is encouraged to provide the performance feedback to the line management and to the client of the site. The project will contribute new knowledge about feedback as an instrument to increase safety interactions between safety coordinators, construction site management, client and construction workers. In addition, the project will contribute new knowledge on how feedback on safety can become part of safety coordinators' normal working routine.
The project has been preceded by two pilot studies. The aim of the pilot studies was to test and calibrate the data collection procedures and to obtain the information needed to perform the power calculations.
This protocol was submitted to the journal Injury Prevention in December 2009, before recruitment of the construction sites, for the purpose of strengthening the validity and credibility of the research design by getting it peer-reviewed before the start of the analyses.
Objective
To test an intervention intended to increase communication and interaction at construction sites in relation to work safety at all managerial levels including the client. The intervention consists of the following elements.
Development of the skills and roles of the safety coordinators so that they are able to give the requisite feedback on (i) safety levels and (ii) communications about safety at the construction sites collected by independent construction safety experts.
Feedback from the safety coordinators to the client and line management (senior management, construction site management and foreman) on (i) development of current work safety and (ii) communication about safety.
Hypotheses
The following hypotheses will be tested in the study.
When the research team coaches the safety coordinators, they will receive adequate skills and support, which will enable them to provide feedback on safety to the line management and to the client.
When/if feedback on safety is given to the line management and to the client from the safety coordinators, then interactions on safety will increase within the line management and between the senior management and client.
When/if interactions on safety increase within the line management and between the senior management and client, then the line management will change their role perception relative to work safety and thus take greater responsibility for safety at work.
When/if line management change their role perception, then the probability that safety is a topic of verbal communication between management and coworkers will be higher (a) during and (b) after the intervention than it was before the intervention.
When/if interactions on safety increase between management and employees, then the safety performance at the construction sites will be higher (a) during and (b) after the intervention than it was before the intervention.
These interrelationships between the five hypotheses are shown in figure 1.
Study hypotheses regarding the effects of leader-based coaching on safety interactions, communication, and performance.
Figure 2 shows the intervention model. By comparison with more traditional safety measures directed towards the employees, this intervention model is directed towards the line management.
Project intervention model regarding the effects of leader-based coaching on safety interactions, communication, and performance.
Definitions
Safety
A safe situation is one where the risks of hazards are perceived to be low and manageable. Reactive safety is the state of being protected against known hazards. Proactive safety is the ability of systems to anticipate and adapt to the potential for changes in vulnerability and hazards.
Safety communication
In this study the focus is on verbal safety communication, either monologue or dialogue, between a leader and one or more workers, and can also take place through electronic media such as cell phones, telephones or walkie-talkies/radio (eg, for crane operators).
Interaction
Social interaction is a reciprocal action, where individuals respond to each other—for example, the safety behaviour of one individual evokes a response from another individual—which again can cause the first person to react further—that is, interaction can have a circular effect. This interaction is the basic building block upon which larger collective structures are composed.
Safety feedback
Positive: In this study, feedback describes the situation when information about the results of communication sampling and safety sampling data are given either orally or electronically via email from the safety coordinator to the client and the line management—that is, positive safety communication feedback and positive safety performance feedback.
Coaching
In this study, coaching will be defined as a verbal communication by which the coachees are inspired to reflect upon and learn from their own experiences and develop opportunities to act, as well as skills necessary to reach goals, solve problems and tackle challenges (freely translated from a Danish definition by Søholm et al).26
Methods and design
The project uses a ‘before, during and after’ design in terms of repeated baseline, intervention and follow-up of measurements, as well as construction sites without intervention. The investigation of each construction site goes on for 20 continuous weeks.
The first 4 weeks will be named ‘period 1’, the following 8 weeks ‘period 2’, and the last 8 weeks ‘period 3’. At the intervention sites, period 1 (week 1–4) refers to the situation before the intervention, period 2 (week 5–12) refers to the situation during the intervention, and period 3 (week 13–20) refers to the situation after the intervention. The intervention will be carried through from week 4 to 11. The reason for starting the intervention in week 4 instead of week 5 is that we believe that it will take at least 1 week for it to take effect.
Data will be collected ‘double-blinded’; the collectors will not know if they are collecting data from an intervention or a control construction site, nor will the common construction workers know if they are working at an intervention or a control construction site.
For descriptive purposes, we will collect the following background data to characterise the included construction sites: hierarchical position of the safety coordinator; number of management levels; number of coworkers; gender distribution; whether the foremen and the ganger is the same person; type of enterprise; the date of the start and end of the follow-up period; baseline values for the interview data and for the safety index data; absence due to, for example, sickness among the safety coordinators, line managers and the client that might have influenced the intervention process; disruptive unexpected events.
Study population
Six Danish construction sites, of which three serve as intervention sites and three as control sites.
A construction site is eligible for inclusion if the following criteria are met.
The construction site must accept the invitation to participate in the research project whether drawn as an intervention or control site.
The construction site must have a safety coordinator.
A minimum of 20 construction workers employed should be expected at any given time during the study period.
The duration of the construction period should be at least 6 months.
The recruitment of the construction sites is to be performed continuously from January 2010 to June 2010 and the status of the site (intervention/control) is decided by lot. A draw will take place every time two construction sites have been recruited. Within a pair, one of the recruited construction sites is randomly assigned to intervention site and the other to control site. The assignment is performed in the following fashion: for each of the two construction sites, a uniformly distributed random number in the interval (0, 1) is generated with a computer. The site with the lowest number will be declared as the intervention site. The computer will be operated by a member of the Statistical Society of the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment who is not involved in the project.
Target population (potential users of the method)
Construction sites involved in building projects lasting at least 8 weeks (the duration of the intervention) and with an appointed safety coordinator.
Treatment of intervention sites
During week 4–11, the following weekly feedback will be given to the safety coordinator from the researcher (who is also coaching):
information from the sampling data on safety level (the percentage of inspected items that were correct)
information from the communication sampling (what percentage of communications between management and coworkers entailed safety)
During week 4–11, the safety coordinator will receive four or five coaching sessions with the researcher (see appendix 3 for details). The first session will take place in week 4. If the safety coordinator is absent due to sickness, etc, and no substitute is provided by the construction company, the safety coordinator's role in the research project will be performed by a researcher.
Treatment of control sites
During week 4–11, the following weekly feedback will be given to the safety coordinator from the researcher (who is also coaching at intervention sites):
information from the sampling data on safety level (the percentage of inspected items that were correct)
No feedback on the collected communication sampling data will be given and no coaching will take place.
Operationalisation of the hypotheses
Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3 will be tested with qualitative methods and involve intervention sites only. Hypotheses 4 and 5 will be tested with confirmatory statistical analysis and involve both intervention sites and control sites.
How to test hypothesis 1
We consider that adequate skills have been obtained if: each of the line managers at each of the intervention sites has received oral feedback on safety from the safety coordinator at least 6 of the 8 weeks in the intervention period. During each of the weekly coaching sessions in the first weeks of the intervention period, the safety coordinator will be asked if and how feedback was delivered to the line management and to the client. In the remaining weeks of the intervention period, the safety coordinator will receive a telephone call from the researcher (who coaches) in which the safety coordinator will be asked if and how feedback was delivered to the line management and the client.
The client of each of the intervention sites should have received oral feedback on safety from the safety coordinator at least four times during the 8-week intervention period.
In the event of sickness absence, etc, among the safety coordinators, it is required that they deliver feedback to each of the managers at least 75% of the weeks in which they (the safety coordinators) are present and deliver feedback to the client at least 50% of the weeks in which they are present. In the event of sickness absence, etc, among the managers and client, the above requirements may be waivered.
How to test hypotheses 2 and 3
Data about interactions between safety coordinator and line management and interactions in line management will be collected by means of semistructured interviews. Data from an intervention site will only be included in the analysis if the site participates throughout the first 12 weeks of the study period. The data collection will include information on the following issues.
To what extent has the intervention been implemented—that is, has the communication about safety between safety coordinator, line management and client taken place at all levels and with what frequency?
Has the role perception regarding work safety of the various actors in the line management changed—that is, how do the various managers perceive their role regarding work safety before and after intervention, if any? (before and after interviews).
Has the role perception regarding work safety of the various actors in the line management changed compared with their role perception regarding production and time scheduling? (before and after interviews).
Semistructured interview data will be collected by the coach. Interview materials will be organised in an NVivo 8 dataset and subjected to thematic analysis. Before and after measures will be subjected to case comparison of themes such as leaders' values, role perception, prioritisation and practices regarding work safety before and after intervention, and leaders' role perception regarding work safety compared with production and time scheduling before and after intervention.
How to test hypothesis 4
Communication data will be sampled by means of structured interviews with coworkers once a week throughout the study period. The arrival of the data collectors at the construction site will be unannounced.
The exact day and time where data will be collected each week is determined as follows. Firstly, time schedules of the data collectors are coordinated with the time schedule of possible use of the company car to drive to the construction sites. With the exception of Mondays (purposely removed as a possibility because of answer categories in the interview—for example, last communication with leader cannot take place on a Sunday), all week days are considered as possible days for collecting data. Secondly, if more than 1 day/week is possible according to time schedules, the day for data collection is randomly chosen by throwing dice (pip 1=Tuesday; pip 2=Wednesday; pip 3= Thursday; pip 4=Friday; pip 5 or pip 6=throw the dice again).
The same randomisation method is used to determine which time of the day the data collectors will arrive at the construction site (pip 1=8:00–8:45 am; pip 2=8:45–9:30 am; pip 3=9:30–10:15 am; pip 4=10:15–11:00 am; pip 5=11:00–11:45 am; pip 6=11:45–12:30 am), taking account of the working hours of both the data collectors and the construction workers.
All available coworkers will be interviewed during the time of each data collection. In the case of force majeure, data will not be collected and the study period will be extended to make up for lost time. The following information will be registered (answer categories in parentheses).
Construction site
Date
Time of last communication with immediate manager (today; yesterday; a few days ago; a week ago; more than a week ago)
Initiator of the communication (worker; manager; both)
Content of communication (production; time scheduling; quality; safety; other subjects) kind of communication (two-way; one-way)
Number of participants in the communication (two persons; more than two persons)
Name of construction gang (eg, carpenters, masons, painters)
Respondent's naming of immediate manager (foreman, ganger, building site representative, other).
Hypothesis 4a will be tested in the following fashion: we will use logistic regression to model the odds that a communication involves safety as a function of the variables: group (‘intervention sites’ vs ‘control sites’), period (‘during’ vs ‘before’ the intervention) and group×period. Measurements within a construction gang obtained during the same day will be treated as repeated measurements. We plan to perform the analysis by use of the GENMOD procedure in SAS V9.1. It is, however, also permitted to use an analogous routine in any other software. An exchangeable correlation structure is assumed (type = EXCH). The effect that we are interested in is group×period. The test is one-tailed, and the significance level is set to 0.025. This means that a two-tailed p value should be <0.05 and that the result should indicate an improvement before we accept the hypothesis. We will use the model-based standard error estimates, and the p value will be based on the Wald statistics.
Hypothesis 4b will be tested in the same way, but with the periods ‘after’ vs ‘before’ the intervention instead of ‘during’ vs ‘before’ the intervention.
How to test hypothesis 5
To test hypothesis 5, we will use an adaption of the Danish construction industry's safety index as a proxy for safety level.27 Safety index data will be collected at the same time as the communication data (see ‘How to test hypothesis 4’). The following information will be registered:
Construction site, period (1, 2, or 3), week (1, 2, … 20), measurement field/area (the construction site is divided into numerous working areas depending on the phase of the construction process).
Topics measured in each field: (1) behaviour and personal protective equipment, ergonomics; (2) access and transport ways, signposting; (3) guard rails/coverings and excavations; (4) order and tidiness; (5) scaffolds, ladders, lifts and platforms.
Number of observed correct items, number of observed incorrect items.
In order to increase the reliability, the measurement fields/areas should not be too large. A reasonable size is 50 m2, and one should be able to overlook the whole area. It is a good idea to make the fields conform to natural divisions of the construction site, such as rooms, stairs, hallways, space from one pillar to another, etc.27
Method of calculation: If, for example, two or more ladders were to be found in the same measurement field/area, and just one of them had a defect in its setup or condition, and all other items in the measurement field are observed as correct, the topic as a whole for that field (‘(5) Scaffolds, ladders, lifts and platforms’) will be held as incorrect. The same would apply if two or more workers were working in a measurement field—a minimum of one incorrect observation among, for example, 10 workers would render an ‘incorrect’ result.
Hypothesis 5a will be tested in the following fashion: we will use logistic regression to model the odds that an observed safety index item is judged as correct, as a function of the variables: topic, group (‘intervention sites’ vs ‘control sites’), period (‘during’ vs ‘before’ the intervention) and group×period. Measurements on the same topic and from the same measurement field obtained at different time periods will be treated as repeated measurements. We plan to perform the analysis by use of the GENMOD procedure in SAS V9.1. It is, however, also permitted to use an analogous routine in any other software. A first-order autoregressive correlation structure is assumed (type = AR(1)). The effect that we are interested in is group×period. The test is one-tailed, and the significance level is set to 0.025. This means that a two-tailed p value should be <0.05 and the result should indicate an improvement before we accept the hypothesis. We will use the model-based standard error estimates, and the p value will be based on the Wald statistics.
Hypothesis 5b will be tested in the same way, but with the periods ‘after’ vs ‘before’ the intervention instead of ‘during’ vs ‘before’ the intervention.
Data from a construction site will only be included in the analysis of hypotheses 4a and 5a if the site participates throughout the first 12 weeks of the study period. The requirement for inclusion in the analysis of hypotheses 4b and 5b is that the site participates throughout the entire study period (20 weeks).
Criteria for overall success
The theorem behind the intervention (figure 2) is confirmed if all of the above mentioned hypotheses hold good.
Power calculations with regard to the statistical tests that will be used in the evaluation of hypotheses 4 and 5
In the project's application for research funding, it was stated that the effect of the intervention was to be considered clinically significant if the proportion of interactions between line management and workers that dealt with safety increased from 40% to 70% (ORR=3.5), and the construction industry's safety index increased from 60% to 80% (ORR=2.7). In order to obtain a 95% power to detect such effects, we need to perform, on average, 23 coworker interviews and 65 safety index observations per week and construction site. Our pilot study indicates that this is feasible. We used the following equation to perform the calculations:
where n is the number of observations needed per week and construction site to obtain a specified power, ORR is the ratio of an odds ratio among the intervention sites and the corresponding odds ratio among the control sites, z is the inverse of the standard normal distribution function, α is the significance level, p is the expected proportion of ‘communications that deal with safety’/‘correct safety index observations’, and C2 is a variance inflation factor which is needed to adjust for intracluster correlations within the construction sites.
The equation is based on a simplified reality that all of the construction sites have the same level of safety at baseline. It is, furthermore, based on the central limit theorem28 and the propagation of error formulas.29 From data obtained in the pilot study, p was estimated to be 0.1 for the interview data and 0.75 for the safety index data, while C2 was estimated to be 1.35 for the interview data and 3.65 for the safety index data. We will, in other words, include 1.35 times more interviews and 3.65 times more safety index observations than we would have needed if there were no intracluster correlation within the sites.
Discussion
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the research project are listed below.
Strengths
The project's research method of using a group-randomised double-blinded case study attempts to ensure that known and unknown confounding factors are evenly distributed between intervention and control construction sites, which thus strengthens the validity.
The project's research method of using double-blind assessment—that is, blinding of both data collectors and coworkers—seeks to promote objectivity and neutrality of the results of safety sampling data and communication sampling data.
This protocol, if adhered to, will strengthen the validity of the results and conclusions of the project. It ensures that all hypotheses, statistical models and significance levels are defined and peer-reviewed before the statistical analyses are performed. The statistical analyses will, in other words, be strictly confirmative and thereby free from hindsight bias.
The mixed methods approach will provide a fuller and more nuanced analysis of the intervention, since the conclusions of the study will be based on an integration of the qualitative and quantitative parts of the project.30 31
Weaknesses
We will be able to determine whether or not the intervention is working (and we will be able to determine the effect of the intervention among the studied construction sites), but we will not be able to determine what the average effect of the intervention would be among all Danish construction sites. There is probably some bias inherent in volunteering to participate. Volunteers might be more aware and interested in doing something about safety than non-volunteers and might therefore respond better to the treatment than an average construction site would. A higher degree of interest and awareness about safety might, however, be associated with a higher safety level and thereby a lower potential for improvement. It is therefore also possible that a treatment effect among volunteers will be smaller than it would be at an average construction site.
The result of the safety sampling is largely dependent on how the construction site is compartmented into measurement fields. Compartmentalisation depends largely on the type of construction and the dynamic phases of the building process. A large measurement field may contain 10 ladders, whereas a smaller measurement field may contain only one ladder. If the probability that one ladder is observed as correct is 0.9, then the probability that 10 ladders are observed as correct is 0.910=0.35. We can in other words increase the estimated safety level of the construction site by decreasing the size of the measurement fields (which is one of the reasons why it is important that the data collection is blinded).
With regard to the safety level sampling, the status of an observed item (correct/incorrect) depends to some extent on the opinion of the observer. One observer might, for example, judge the order and tidiness of a measurement field to be good enough, while another would not. This is another reason for the importance of a blinded data collection.
According to the instructions on how to collect communication data, all available coworkers should be interviewed. In this respect, a selection bias of available coworkers might take place. For example, data collectors might not be able to interview immigrant workers because of insufficient language skills (some might not speak Danish or English).
Opportunities
The researchers' involvement in the coaching will give them a great opportunity to hear of any problems or barriers arising in the course of the safety coordinator's feedback process. This may generate information that can be used to overcome hindrances in future interventions.
Threats
The coaching of safety coordinators may not be practicable. Coaching the safety coordinator is a new and yet untested strategy of improving safety performance at Danish construction sites. This way of involving the safety coordinator by enhancing communication and interaction about safety might encounter practical difficulties and unfavourably affect the intervention theorem and its implementation. Firstly, there is a risk that safety coordinators will not be able to use the coaching instruments delivered by the researchers and thereby cut off the potential of the intervention. Secondly, there is a risk of disruption of the intervention effect when the safety coordinator him/herself is part of the construction site management and as such has to ‘wear two hats’ as far as to both deliver and receive feedback about safety performance. This may give rise to the question of whether the safety coordinator will influence the follow-up interview in the way of possibly over-rating the intervention effect on construction site management level.
Blinding of data collectors as well as coworkers at the individual construction site may not be feasible. With regard to coworkers, there is a risk that line management will, unintentionally, give hints to coworkers about being an intervention site or not. With regard to data collectors, there is a risk that, if they are in possession of the knowledge, coworkers will unintentionally give hints to data collectors about being an intervention site or not. Moreover, the researchers involved in the coaching might inadvertently give hints to the ‘blinded’ construction safety experts who collect the data. To reduce the risk that the blinded data collectors should discover the status of the site, all sites are given oral feedback on safety sampling data from the researcher who coaches the safety coordinators. By this measure, the people at all sites believe that they are given an intervention. Should the data collectors meet the researcher who is doing the coaching, they will not know if he/she is visiting an intervention or a control site. The risk of detection will be further reduced by telling the safety coordinators not to talk about their coaching sessions with the data collectors.
Acknowledgments
We give sincere thanks to Helene Feveile and Karina Marietta Nielsen at the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment for valuable discussions. We also thank Elizabeth Bengtsen and Rikke Nilsson at the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment for providing research literature.
Appendix 1 Safety sampling guide
Each construction site is divided into a series of measurement fields/areas for which the following information will be reported.
| Topic | Correct | Incorrect | Total |
| 1. Behaviour and personal protection equipment, ergonomics | |||
| 2. Access and transport ways, signposting | |||
| 3. Guard rails and coverings, excavations | |||
| 4. Order and tidiness | |||
| 5. Scaffolds, ladders, lifts and platforms |
Appendix 2 Invitational letter to construction sites
The following text will be sent to Danish construction sites.
Seeking construction sites for participation in a research project on work safety.
You are hereby invited to participate in a research project on work safety in the construction sector. The project is funded by the Working Environment Research Fund and will be carried out by the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment.
During a period of 20 weeks construction safety experts will once a week collect safety data on your construction site. The data collection includes safety observation and 2 min interviews with coworkers. All participating construction sites and their employees are guaranteed anonymity.
Throughout the research period, safety data will be presented so that it will be possible to act on the observations made by the construction safety experts. The following requirements for participation must be fulfilled:
The construction site must have a safety coordinator.
A minimum of 20 construction workers should be employed at any given time of the study period.
The duration of the construction period should be at least 6 months
Sincerely yours,
Johnny Dyreborg, Pete Kines, and Dorte Raaby Andersen
The Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment
Lersø Parkalle 105, 2100 Copenhagen
Tel.: 39 16 52 00
E-mail: djy{at}nrcwe.dk
Appendix
Content of coaching sessions
The intervention consists of a series of coaching sessions—that is, meetings with the safety coordinator. The purpose of the sessions is to encourage safety coordinators to view themselves as key figures with regard to safety in all aspects of the construction site. The sessions should also enable them to give feedback about safety sampling data to the line management and client of the construction project. The skills and support required for safety coordinators to carry this out will be obtained through coaching techniques.26 32 33 The essence of the coaching sessions is the coachee's own situation, resources, wishes and expectations. The point is to encourage safety coordinators to take a look at their own norms and values, and formulate what they want to obtain with regard to safety. This will be obtained by effective questioning, reflective assignments, brainstorming, perspectivisation and visualisation.
The coach—that is, a researcher using coaching techniques—should not interpret or evaluate, but verbalise what he/she sees or hears to raise coachee's awareness of their own signals. Coaches should point out choices that are made and encourage coachees to commit themselves to, and take responsibility for, the goals they formulate. The pursuit of their own answers, inner motivation, meaning and commitment increases the probability that coachees will transform their thoughts into action.32
Structure of the coaching programme
The first meeting will introduce the safety coordinator to the research project and his/her role in it. The actual coaching, where structured coaching techniques are used, will start as soon as the introduction is performed. The present research project will utilise a coaching structure that is inspired by John Whitmores (1996:200–203) GROW-model for coaching.34
The GROW-model
The following three coaching sessions will revolve around the goals and plans that were made during the first session. The safety coordinator will be coached to overcome possible problems and challenges that may have arisen in the quest of attaining these goals. The first coaching session will last about 1.5 h while each of the other sessions will last for about 45 min. Apart from the four structured coaching sessions, the coach will phone the safety coordinator to check on the progress each week. The first meeting will not be held at the construction site. In this way the safety coordinator can be introduced to the subject without interruptions due to work-related matters.
References
Footnotes
Funding Funding for this study was received from the Danish Working Environment Research Fund, project No 12-2008-03.
Competing interests None.
Patient consent Obtained.
Ethics approval In Denmark, all research projects involving humans are required to apply for ethics approval at a committee on research ethics before the project may commence. We submitted an application for ethics approval to the committee on research ethics for the Capital Region of Denmark. Since our project is not a clinical trial and neither uses nor involves collection of any personal data, the committee decided that it was not necessary to offer an ethical opinion. (According to The Act on Processing of Personal Data (Act No 429 of 31 May 2000), which implements the European Union Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals, ‘personal data’ is defined as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’)’).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.