Polish workers are the largest group of migrant workers in Norway and are particularly well represented in the construction industry. According to several studies, migrant workers are more prone to occupational accidents than native workers are. This difference is often attributed to poor communication and lack of linguistic skills. We explored factors affecting occupational safety related to migrant workers with an emphasis on communication, culture and language through interviews with Polish and Norwegian workers. The study shows that the construction industry in Norway mainly focuses on language as an issue. Culture is seen as a contributing factor, but is somewhat neglected. Fewer measures to cope with challenges related to migrant workers were found for cultural issues as compared to linguistic. However, the study shows that cultural aspects are at least as important. This gives implications for safety management in the construction industry. This paper suggests considering cultural aspects more in safety management related to migrant workers to achieve the desired safety focus at construction sites.
Construction projects are known for their complexity characteristics, such as a large number of stakeholders, uncertainty, and a dynamic work environment. These characteristics imply that different approaches for safety management can be useful under different circumstances. For example, low severity occupational accidents are fairly common in most construction sites, and therefore these events offer useful learning opportunities. In turn, resilience across managerial and operational levels is probably ubiquitous in construction sites, regardless of being taken for granted and neglected as a source of learning. Therefore, there is an opportunity for the joint use of how Safety-I and Safety-II in construction, giving rise to more effective safety management. This paper explores how Safety-I and Safety-II can be jointly adopted in construction. The discussion is based on two case studies, one from Brazil and another from Norway, in which two safety practices -safety planning and event reporting -were analysed from the perspectives of Safety-I and Safety-II. We conclude that these two perspectives can be integrated into established practices allowing organisation to learn from accidents, incidents as well as from everyday operations.
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