MEASURING PSYCHOSOCIAL WORK ENVIRONMENT IN CONSTRUCTION

The study of psychosocial is highly relevant for project-based sector like construction owing to the following justifications: mobility of workers, constant change of workplace, diversity of work performed, physically demanding, high health and safety risk, meeting deadlines, monetary constraints and male-dominated industry. All these factors contribute to the industry having unique and different sets of psychosocial factors affecting the working environment. An important scrutiny is to highlight the psychosocial factors affecting management team and operatives on construction sites. Further analysis into the differences of psychosocial problems encountered by these two cohorts will be probed. To perform this study, an action programme identified as Utmärkt Bygge (Excellent Construction) was adopted. Utmärkt Bygge was designed with the aim to improve the cooperation and effectiveness for all players in a construction project. The measuring instrument in the programme is Spiken which is in the form of checklists. The authors analysed the impact of psychosocial factors among these two cohorts comprising of 38 site managers and 103 operatives from a large construction company where established questionnaires and structured interviews were used to identify and examine the issues at the workplace. Overall, the findings indicate that 75% of site managers and 60% of operatives are in agreement that the psychosocial working environment is satisfactory. The work helps to identify the psychosocial problems faced by both the management team and the operatives on construction sites. This in turn provides the company with knowledge on areas of improvements for personnel on construction sites