What if we told you that people working longer hours doesn’t always mean they deliver their best work? It’s probably not actually surprising to many subcontractors in construction, as we are all familiar with the struggle to balance project demands and delivery timelines with the rest of our lives.
The culture of excessive hours and always-on scheduling in the Australian industry means 64% of the existing workforce report working more than 50 hours a week, and 59% are unsatisfied with their work-life balance.
With construction companies under pressure to deliver on time despite project delays – due to extreme weather, supply-chain issues as well as worker shortages – without deliberate steps to change it, the construction process will continue to make life difficult for the Australian workforce.
This not only contributes to high rates of skilled labour churn in the industry, it also shows in the mental health impacts on workers. Statistics show that the existing workforce is leaving for better conditions – where they do not face such inflexible conditions and long work hours – attracting new workers to join the construction sector is hard. This is particularly true when seeking to attract and retain a gender-diverse site workforce.
The shortage of skilled construction workers adds to the pressure for businesses in the construction industry. This lead to an increase in the rate of defects, safety incidents, productivity challenges and labour costs – impacting the business bottom line.
A new partnership aims to change this picture. The Construction Industry Culture Taskforce is a joint initiative between the Australian Constructors Association, the NSW and Victorian State Governments and workforce researchers from RMIT, ANU, UNSW and the University of Tasmania.
The goal is to develop a Culture Standard for Construction that will address the matters a construction company can control and change to improve wellbeing, productivity and inclusion in their workforce.
Unblocking the project pipeline
The motivations are not only around improving life for individual workers. Australia has a major shortfall of skilled workers for the sector across all stages of the construction career pathway. In an era where we have an aging workforce, we are not attracting sufficient apprentices, and those we do attract are not always staying the course. In the qualified workforce, drop-out rates are problematic, with people often citing the long work hours and lack of work-life balance as a reason for hanging up the hard hat permanently and switching to another sector.
As we grapple with a labour shortage, the industry still struggles to recruit and retain women, with less than two percent of site labour identifying as female. Again, lack of flexibility, long hours and struggling to manage caring responsibilities including parenting are all obstacles for female staff. In addition, many sites still lack appropriate amenities for female workers.
At the same time, workforce shortages mean that we do not have the amount of labour needed to deliver Australia’s urgent infrastructure and general construction projects, including catching up on housing supply. In short – if we don’t have the tradies, our industry can’t get the jobs done, and working existing people longer and harder is not a solution.
As the draft culture standard discussion paper notes:
“The construction industry is under pressure and is not viewed as an employer of choice. There are significant skill gaps within the industry which are projected to increase as the pipeline advances, and productivity in the sector is stagnant.
The workforce experiences disproportionate wellbeing issues compared to broader society and severely low levels of diversity when compared to other industries. These problems impact the industry’s ability to deliver the pipeline of work in the most efficient and effective way and attract and retain a healthy, well and diverse workforce.”
Key tools in the new culture kit
One of the primary draft suggestions in the standard is construction adopting a five-day work week, to rebalance the ledger towards workers having time for family life. Monday-to-Friday was proposed in the draft standard, which would potentially also be beneficial for community harmony where projects are occurring in a dense residential or mixed-use area. For example, commercial office redevelopments, multi-residential towers and retail centre expansions currently navigate complex community objections where work occurs after hours and on weekends.
That said, for some projects such as highway upgrades, commuter road redevelopments and detached residential housing, Monday-to-Friday may not be optimal. In these cases, a contractor or subcontractor could stagger staff across five-day work weeks over the full seven days. Increasing the use of digital technologies to improve rostering to match people, tasks and hours more effectively to match both the five-day work week requirements and project needs could be a solid workaround. Having the ability to track hours easily, with the help of construction scheduling software, will also help subcontractors ensure staff are not exceeding 50 hours per week and give greater insight into how to reallocate people to balance workloads across the team. For the business, it should see a reduction in labour costs and, by ensuring training workers, an increase in the number of skilled workers available.
Another major element of the standard is increasing support for health and wellbeing for the Australian workforce through proactive programmes such as introducing Mental Health First Aiders, and addressing gender disparity through targets for recruitment, retention and promotion.
Testing the waters
The standard has been piloted on five major infrastructure projects. Wentworth Point new Highschool (NSW); Mulgoa Road Upgrade Project, Stage One (NSW); Narre-Warren Cranbourne Road Upgrade (Victoria); Brunt Road level Crossing Removal project (Victoria); and Randwick Children’s Hospital Redevelopment (NSW) have all put the standard through its paces.
This has meant project management adapting to measures including a five-day work week for all workers, and a cap on hours of no more than 50 hours per week. In addition, there has been a greater investment in mental health and wellbeing support, and leadership training for those responsible for others, to test the benefits for staff retention, productivity and project delivery capacity.
A change to procurement
While the standard will be optional, the Taskforce is proposing that procurement look to screen tenders for adoption of the standard.
What this means for subcontractors is that early adopters could stand out from the pack in tendering, and also that the project proponents adding the standard into tender criteria are more likely to adopt programs and expectations that align with operating in accordance with the standard. In other words, a project looking for tenderers who adopt the standard can’t justify expecting the subcontractors to meet timelines that require six- or seven-day work weeks.
The final standard is expected to be launched this year, following evaluation of the pilots and the extensive feedback during the industry consultation period. You can be sure we at Neo will be watching carefully, and seeking ways our software platform and team can support your business to put the new standard into practice.
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