THE EFFECTS OF FEEDBACK AND GOAL-SETTING ON SAFETY PERFORMANCE AT 2 CONSTRUCTION SITES

An internal safety inspection hits to be carried out weekly on buildin g construction sites in Finland. This procedure is widely believed to be ineffective, as illustrated by the high accident rates in the build ing industry. In this study, a new method for weekly inspections, base d on participation and the principles of performance management, was t ested at two construction sites. Eight safety rules were formulated to gether with the safety personnel of the company. Once a week the super visor and the workers' safety delegate observed the safety lever, usin g a standard observation method. After baseline observations, an infor mation meeting was organized for all workers, and thereafter the safet y index of each weekly observation round was marked on a large graph o n the wall of the dining room. The safety index rose from the baseline of 60% to 89% during the feedback at Site 1. At Site 2 the index rose from 67% to 91%. The stage of the construction process had no signifi cant effect on the results; the index level of 90% was achieved at all stages of the process. The most visible change was an improvement in order and tidiness. The subindexes concerning protection against falli ng, machine safety, scaffoldings and use of personal protective device s improved to nearly 100%, which should prevent severe injuries in par ticular. The new audit method with weekly graphic feedback could well be a method for the construction industry to reach a radically higher safety level. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd