health working group, David Bucksley, health, safety and wellbeing director at Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and chair of the CIOB’s health, safety and wellbeing panel, Kari Sprostranova, health, safety and wellbeing director at Mace Group, Henrietta Frater, head of HSE and wellbeing at The Crown Estate, a trustee of Mates in Mind and co-chair of the HCLG, Stuart Young, head of stakeholder engagement and management at the Department for Business and Trade, and Dr Carla Toro, associate professor of mental health sciences at Warwick University medical school. Opening the conversation about how to improve
wellbeing and mental health in the sector and the origins of the HCLG group on mental health, Henrietta Frater said mental health in construction is “definitely something we need to do a lot more about”. “When we look at some of the statistics, people in construction don’t take time off work and potentially get to a point of crisis,” she explained. “There’d been a huge amount of work and awareness-raising, but we also recognised as a collective that we could end up in a circular conversation talking about the same things. We keep on talking about the fact there is a problem and not doing anything about it. Then there is a huge amount of fatigue about that understandably.” After a meeting with the CIOB, the HCLG and its stakeholders realised how much more could be done. They are now working together with government and other bodies, including the convening body, the Construction Leadership Council, to understand what the sector can do as a whole together from the top down through systemic change to support the action and initiatives already happening on the ground. “We can do a lot as a collective, as an industry, to
make a change,” said Henrietta Frater. “You can do a lot around the individual, making sure they are supported. But we wanted to move away from that so the individual can be supported more effectively by looking at what we do as a system and by creating systemic, sustainable change in our industry to make a positive impact.”
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“There is a lot of work going on,” said Kari
Sprostranova. “We’ve come together as an industry in sessions like this. At one of them, someone said, ‘I just want you to pay me on time’. That really resonated, as well as someone pointing out how the car park was set up to differentiate between workers and leadership and where you sit in the canteen. It’s not necessarily trying to find a magic wand. It’s listening to people and actually delivering an outcome.”
FINANCIAL WELLBEING CRITICAL FOR BETTER MENTAL HEALTH Behind the scenes, lots of work is happening in a phased approach that involves the HCLG and representatives of tier one groups, contractors and clients. This includes research from Warwick University, which is bringing people together in forums with the trades and other people on the ground who are doing the work onsite to better understand what their barriers and solutions are. This academic research is based on focus groups with
50 construction workers from Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, London and Somerset. The data is currently being analysed, but Dr Carla Toro was able to share some initial findings. “What has come through so far is that certain things
come up as really hard. Job demands of long work hours and unmanageable timeframes cause real pressure. On top of that, financial and job insecurity keep coming through. They have come through in other research previously, but what’s interesting about this group and the focus groups is that we also asked what the solutions could be. “Regarding the financial insecurity, people said it
would be nice if they could be paid for bank holidays and when they called in sick,” said Dr Toro. People are also asking for financial advice and support, which companies in other sectors are increasingly offering because of the links to mental wellbeing. Social support – a sense of appreciation and value
– is also a key area. It registered low in the research. “It would be really nice if the client could treat us with a
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