Purpose: The leadership style and communication practices of supervisors in the Australian construction industry were measured. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of leadership style and communication practices of Australian construction supervisors on workgroup health and safety (H&S) climate and behaviour.Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was administered to members of 20 workgroups engaged in rail construction work on the Level Crossing Removal Project and the Melbourne Metro Tunnel Project in Victoria, Australia. The survey measured components of supervisors’ transformational and transactional leadership, communication practices, the group H&S climate and workers’ self-reported H&S compliance and participation.Findings: Supervisors’ transformational and transactional leadership, as well as communication practices, were all positively and significantly correlated with group H&S climate and workers’ self-reported H&S behaviours. The transformational leadership component of providing an appropriate model was the strongest predictor of H&S participation, while H&S compliance was predicted by the transactional leadership component of providing contingent reward, as well as supervisors’ communication practices. H&S climate fully mediated the relationship between supervisory leadership and workers’ self-reported H&S behaviour.Originality/value: The research demonstrates that both transformational and transactional supervisory leadership are important in the construction context. Effective communication between supervisors and workers is also important for H&S. The findings suggest that supervisory leadership development programmes may be an effective way to improve H&S performance in predominantly subcontracted construction workgroups.

The health and safety (H&S) of workers is a critical project management goal in construction. As globalization and migrant movement increases, construction projects are becoming more nationally diverse. Among multinational workforces, language barriers present an obvious but largely unresolved H&S communication challenge, with current strategies in use yet to be assessed. On a large construction project in the United Kingdom, H&S communication strategies were explored through an ethnographic approach. This paper contributes by revealing the impracticalities of using employees as interpreters in workgroups of six or more and the limitations of technologies in a dynamic construction site environment. It also highlights the unresolved challenge of translating safety videos in multiple languages. Challenges arose including translators refusing to translate because they were not receiving extra financial benefits or recognition in their workload. Translators were also given favorable treatment during disciplinary processes because they were crucial to the continued operation of the site team. This reveals the complexities involved in implementing effective H&S communication strategies on international and multinational projects, which have previously remained largely ignored.

Large construction projects frequently operate with multi-national workforces, utilizing migrant workers to provide both skilled and unskilled labour. Multi-national workforces are also brought together through joint ventures, as companies from different countries collaborate and share their expertise to construct large and complex construction projects. A multi-national joint venture in the UK provides the case study for an examination of the safety management challenges found on such projects. Whilst language and communication issues amongst workers are typically primary concerns, here they have not been prioritized. Instead, findings are presented that illuminate more nuanced and unquantifiable problems that faced the safety management team. An ethnographically informed approach was mobilized, with the lead researcher spending three years on the site with the safety team gathering data. Analysis revealed several challenges: problems with non-UK company compliance with UK legislation and standards; differences in working practices amongst both non-UK workers and their managers; differences associated with national cultures; and problems of poor worker welfare. It is suggested that awareness of these challenges should inform both the way in which such projects are initially contracted, as well as the development of more sophisticated safety management systems that better support multi-national construction projects in practice.

The practice of subcontracting out construction work has been identified as a contributing factor in poor work health and safety (WHS) performance. Relatively few studies have considered the processes through which safety climates develop within subcontracted workgroups. This study sought to examine the relationship between intragroup communication relating to WHS and the workgroup safety climate. Data were collected from 39 subcontracted workgroups in the Australian construction industry using social network analysis to examine worker-to-worker, supervisor-to-worker, and worker-to-supervisor patterns of WHS-related communication. The relationship between group social network metrics and group safety climate were examined. Network density was a predictor of the workgroup safety climate. Furthermore, a suppressor effect was found such that WHS-related communication between group members and the group supervisor increased the variance in group safety climate explained in a regression model. The results highlight the importance of intragroup communication in creating a shared understanding about the priority placed on WHS within subcontracted construction workgroups. In using subcontracted workgroups as the unit of analysis and linking within-group communication patterns to the workgroup safety climate, the research makes an original contribution to knowledge in empirically demonstrating the safety benefits associated with fostering a dense communication network and encouraging frequent supervisor–worker communication in subcontracted workgroups.