Construction Workers’ Reasons for Not Reporting Work-Related Injuries: An Exploratory Study

This studied the reasons why construction workers don’t report work-related injuries. Surveys were completed by 135 workers.

Results

The main findings were all of the expected and well-known reasons of why people don’t report work-related injuries; so nothing particularly surprising here.

Main reasons included:

72% said the injury was small, so they didn’t need to
47% said that pain is a natural part of their job
47% said home treatment with medications was enough to deal with the injury
36% weren’t sure if their injury was work-related
25% were concerned they wouldn’t be re-engaged by the contractor if they filed a claim

Authors discussed some of the results. This included industry/profession differences in what types of injuries will be reported. For instance, healthcare workers may classify a sprained ankle as a major work-related injury whereas construction workers may perceive it as no big deal.

Also shown was the lack of reporting due to perceived negative consequences. This included workers concerned about losing their job or impacting being hired again in the future.

Also of interest was the reluctance some workers had to reporting incidents, where they didn’t report some incidents due to wanting to “get the safety incentive for no lost work time”. This highlights the concern many of us have around managing numbers and unintended consequences of interventions.

The study also revealed some other well-known factors, including:

People were concerned about being labelled a whinger for reporting something
The time it takes to report the injury will make the person fall behind in their work
Social pressure of reporting where they believe they will be ridiculed and joked about being weak
How they don’t want to do the light duties that will be assigned

And another that was interesting but expected was people not reporting injuries due to the concern that “they will make a new safety rule as a result of my injury report that will make my job more difficult”.

Moreover, some of these factors also speak to the—sometimes humiliating (eg, “light duties”)—way that organisations treat workers in order to massage statistics or remove decision latitude to these professionals.

Authors: Authors: Jeffery Taylor Moore, Konstantin P. Cigularov, Julie M. Sampson, John C. Rosecrance & Peter Y. Chen (2013), International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 19:1, 97-105

Study link: https://doi.org/10.1080/10803548.2013.11076969

LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/construction-workers-reasons-reporting-work-related-study-hutchinson