Georgina Jones is deputy chief executive of charity SOS Silence of Suicide
The new Labour government’s target of building 1.5 million homes over five years has been welcomed in many quarters, but what does this really mean for the welfare of construction workers in an industry that is already encountering an ongoing mental health crisis?
“Targets have a strong potential to create a toxic environment whereby mental health falls down the pecking order”
Construction workers in the UK are four times more likely to die by suicide than professionals in any other sector. This alarming problem is likely to be aggravated further by ambitious building targets.
The construction industry will need to be building 300,000 new homes a year – a feat it hasn’t achieved since 1973, according to Office for National Statistics research – amid the need for an extra 251,500 extra construction workers by 2028 just to meet demand, according to the Construction Industry Training Board.
Finding more skilled workers is a continual challenge, so if these roles can’t be filled, then the weight of pressure will further fall on the existing workforce.
This is worrying, as these types of working targets have a strong potential to create a toxic environment whereby the mental health of construction workers falls down the pecking order in favour of “getting the job done”.
Lots of workers are already spending time away from family and friends while working on projects, often in a different part of the country – and this is during a period when the UK isn’t even managing to build 200,000 homes a year, let alone 300,000.
More homebuilding targets does, unfortunately, mean more of moving from one building site to the next for contractors and tradespeople, many of whom operate as sole traders, preventing them from developing social bonds with those around them and causing feelings of isolation.
It also means more long, unsociable hours, physical demands – for a predominantly male workforce – and less time to consider accessing mental health support resources.
As a country, we’ve acknowledged we need more homes, but now is the time to acknowledge that we need more attention to mental health support, too. More needs to be done to properly acknowledge the problem, to understand it and work out how it can be addressed in the workplace.
Start talking
A crucial starting point is for mental health support to be proactively brought onto work sites. Not ad hoc, but on a frequent or permanent basis.
Getting the word ‘suicide’ spoken without stigma would also be big, and would align with our fundamental aim too: to stop hiding it and open up a conversation.
We want construction companies to come together and share best practice so that all businesses, irrespective of size, are adopting the same standards towards mental health. One of these key standards should be proactive mental health support, which can come in many forms. Our mobile wellbeing hubs, for example, can help to plant this seed in many construction organisations.
Other approaches could include quick welfare checks at the start of each shift, through to an introduction of ‘stop and chat’ type sessions every week – these types of regular initiatives will create comfortable environments for people to open up with each other.
And we need better training of senior managers so that they can spot the signals and pick up on things such as body language, regardless of how well they know an individual.
Federations that bring together decision-makers need to set the standards for their industry and involve us in this discussion – we need a system-wide change to begin to tackle this ongoing crisis.
That’s where SOS Silence of Suicide can play a part, by facilitating these conversations and encouraging knowledge-sharing.
