Effective supervisory behaviour and safety at the building site

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Abstract

There is a need to study the connections between good management in general and safety. The study was conducted at 16 sites of a construction company. These sites had 15 site managers and 16 other first-line foremen. The accidents were analyzed according to the company accident reports. A safety checklist was developed to determine the safety level of the sites. The safety climate was measured by means of a questionnaire made up of questions concerning safety attitudes and opinions. The Operant Supervisory Taxonomy and Index (OSTI) was used in this study to analyze the supervisory behaviour. The study proved that the most effective foremen paid more attention to monitoring worker performance and spent less time indicating antecedents than did their less effective counterparts. The most effective foremen gave workers feedback about the consequences more often. The results also show that the most effective foremen spent a greater proportion of their time communicating with workers about non-work related topics. The characteristics of effective safety supervision are the same as the characteristics for generally effective supervision.

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