When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, PPE, social distancing and remote work all became household words. But for essential construction workers, some of these safety measures were easier to follow than others—after all, you can’t pour a concrete foundation or put up walls working from home. So how did that impact construction safety professionals? Jennifer McNelly, CEO of the American Society of Safety Professionals, picked up the phone to find out—and thus was born ASSP’s now-annual Corporate Listening Tour.
A simple enough concept—a phone call— engages safety leaders across the country in conversation about current safety trends. “Our first listening tour was in 2020, and it started as a response to understanding the world had changed. As part of that change, what was being expected of occupational safety and health professionals was very different. And we decided that it was important to pick up the phone and call industry leaders and find out what’s going on—and what that means for safety professionals.”
“From an ASSP perspective, it was, ‘How do we get ahead of what is expected of our members to support them through this changing world of work?’” McNelly says. “The first year it was, ‘What are we hearing?’ Then, ‘How do we help and communicate that down to our members?’ As it has grown from 2020 to this year, it has changed how we think about the questions [we ask].” This year’s tour revealed five trending topics, from managing shifting priorities to empowering safety leaders.
FOCUS ON WHAT MATTERS
Any safety professional and construction company’s focus is preventing serious injuries and/or fatalities, and sometimes that means prioritizing preventing major incidents over minor ones. This was the first common theme McNelly heard. Constrained resources coupled with higher safety expectations could mean “accepting slight increases in less severe incidents so that the big incidents do not happen,” says McNelly. But the answer to balancing those incidences might not be as clear as simply shifting priorities. McNelly asserts all safety trends are interconnected.
MANAGE WORKFORCE CHANGES AND SAFETY PRIORITIES
“[Turnover] isn’t a new issue, but the intensity of it is increased,” McNelly says. “If you have high turnover, there’s an exposure associated with increased risk. There was one executive who said to me, ‘My team’s spending 80% of their time retraining new people.’” Anecdotes like this help ASSP address how someone should rethink and disrupt a problem cycle like high turnover.
EMBRACE OSH-RELATED APPLICATIONS OF AI
Another obvious trend McNelly noticed this year was technology and its impact on safety. “I did have two executives share with me about the use of predictive analytics,” she says. “Two executives with two different utilizations. With any technology, we don’t know where we’re going to land. But we can ask how a technology that powerful can better enable safety needs.”
Asking the right questions is part of ASSP’s job on the Corporate Listening Tour, especially when it comes to uncharted territory like AI. Good questions provoke better answers, leading to a high-quality resource for informing safety best practices. This resource is “not just the aggregate of general information that exists,” says McNelly, but a document of curated responses to current—if uncertain—events.
MANAGE CULTURAL SHIFTS AND GOVERNANCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
With an upcoming election and several recent and dramatic political events, it is no surprise that economic and political uncertainty are affecting construction businesses in 2024, but how does that theme relate to safety? McNelly noted responses that ranged from war in other parts of the world, to natural disasters disrupting the supply chain, to the influence of CSR, ESG and other global reporting expectations on businesses’ behavior.
“In last year’s report, our headline was Governance Matters. And I believe this to be true today,” she says. “The decision-making process informs safety culture, safety outcomes and overall [company] culture.”
EMPOWER INFLUENTIAL OSH LEADERS IN THE CHANGING WORKPLACE
This year’s discussion on company culture encompassed the evolving expectations of occupational safety and health professionals. The technical competence of these professionals is never in question, but the question is, rather, how that technical competence translates into operational and organizational influence. “Even back in 2020, business acumen might’ve been the term used,” says McNelly. “It’s a different expectation now. It’s about leadership and understanding the landscape that businesses are dealing with and designing solutions that accommodate this ever-dynamic, changing world of work.”
Some trends may come and go, but the core practices and competencies central to construction safety are consistent each year. “Though everybody is unique,” says McNelly, “80% of what [contractors] need to be focused on is the same. As we think about the mindset of our membership, we want them to think about the trends. We want them to be technically the best. We want them to know what’s coming at them and we want them to be empowered to proactively lead from whatever their sphere of influence is. From that, change happens.”
