For the construction industry, safety is paramount. Workers on sites face many hazards, including potential falls and possible injuries from heavy and falling objects. Promoting safety to workers is a priority, and construction management companies have an added incentive as it frequently results in fewer site accidents, leading to fewer delays that impact deliverables and ultimately costs. Several technologies are in use today to promote safety, including building information modeling, 4D visualization, and wearable sensors, as well as low-tech signage, videos, and slogans. But what about marketing safety to stakeholders outside the organization? This kind of awareness campaign focuses on the safety challenges that the construction sector faces and can enhance the public’s perception of the industry, even affecting the public’s sense of safety.
Researchers Johan Ninan and Stewart Clegg refer to this external communication as safetywashing and define it as “as the strategic practice of promoting, marketing, and branding of safety practices without full disclosure of negative information to improve the image of the organization.” In their paper “Safetywashing: The Strategic Use of Safety in the Construction Industry” for the Journal of Management in Engineering, they identify these misleading safety communication strategies and seek to determine their effects. The high growth rate of the construction industry in India, along with the wide media coverage of the growth, made it an ideal case study. The authors performed a literature review, analyzed news articles on construction safety during 2018, and identified several safetywashing strategies, including safety as a project objective, explaining safety initiatives, and investing in safety. Learn more about these strategies and the effects on prioritizing safety and diverting focus at https://doi.org/10.1061/JMENEA.MEENG-5838. The abstract is below.
Abstract
In this article, we discuss the concept of safetywashing defined as the strategic practice of promoting, marketing, and branding of safety practices without full disclosure of negative information to improve the image of the organization. The research seeks to answer two questions: first, what are safetywashing strategies? Second, what are the effects of safetywashing strategies? To study this, 106 news articles relating to construction safety in India, as well as 439 reader comments on them, were systematically collected and their contents analyzed to compile multiple case studies which had evidence of safetywashing. We analyze multiple instances from these case studies to build theoretical insight into these strategies and their effects, using an approach anchored in a social exchange theoretical framework. We highlight different safetywashing strategies employed in the construction sector, such as safety as a project objective, explaining safety initiatives, associating with pioneers, as well as investing in safety. These strategies lead to accepting of organizations, prioritizing safety, and diverting focus, all of which have different implications for safety practice in the construction industry.
Explore the case study as a lesson in acting with transparency about safety in the ASCE Library: https://doi.org/10.1061/JMENEA.MEENG-5838.
