Short description:

This book covers a wide range of topics relating to the health and wellbeing of the construction workforce.

Long description:

This book covers a wide range of topics relating to the health and wellbeing of the construction workforce. Based on more than two decades of work examining various aspects of workers? health and wellbeing, the book addresses a key topic in construction management: how the design of work environments, construction processes and organisation of work impact upon construction workers? physical and psychological health.

Occupational health is a significant problem for the construction industry. However, the subject of health does not receive as much attention in occupational health and safety research or practice as the subject of safety. Traditional management approaches (focused on the prevention of accidents and injuries) are arguably ill-suited to addressing issues of workers? health and wellbeing. This book seeks to explain how workers' health and wellbeing are impacted by working in the construction sector, and suggest ways in which organisations (and decision makers within them) can positively shape workplaces and practices in ways that better support construction workers to maintain healthy and productive working lives.

Including chapter summaries and discussion questions to encourage student readers to reflect on and formulate their own viewpoints about the issues raised in each chapter, the book has the potential to be used as a textbook in undergraduate or postgraduate occupational health and safety, or construction management courses dealing with occupational health and safety. It could also be used as supplementary recommended reading in undergraduate or postgraduate programmes in architecture, engineering or management.

?This book is extremely topical for all industries? as it considers gender, well-being, psychosocial hazards, working hours, resilience and more, but most importantly health?

One of the central features of this book is that the authors acknowledge when an initiative or concept has failed or failed to succeed as well as intended. They also remind us repeatedly how so many OHS concepts and initiatives remain in their infancy or are underdeveloped. This caution and the reality statements provide a significantly different tone to many other OHS or mental health management books.? Kevin Jones, https://safetyatworkblog.com/

?The authors here bring together the insights they have gained over twenty years of their joint and individual research into the health and wellbeing of workers in the construction sector, backed with evidence from dozens of other researchers worldwide. They set out their argument early on: that the immediacy of safety concerns has led to the neglect of construction workers? health, that this oversight has led to a great deal of harm to individuals, and that many wellbeing programmes put the onus on individual workers to improve their own health rather than addressing the systemic factors which make construction so challenging for its participants? construction workers love their work, and why not? You get to build stuff! But the toll on their physical and mental health is far too high. This book is timely.? Peter Bateman, Safeguard Magazine

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: The health imperative 2. Attending to the "H" in OH&S 3. Work-related factors impacting construction workers' psychological health 4. Working time, health and wellbeing 5. Women's health in construction 6. Employee resilience 7. Health issues in the construction industry in developing countries: The case of Sub-Saharan Africa 8. Young construction workers' health and wellbeing 9. Healthy ageing at work 10. Building a sense of place 11. Thinking about the future