When there’s a strong culture of safety, workers and jobsites benefit, and best practices are more likely used.
Kit Dickinson, ADP industry executive, says employee engagement is where that culture begins. Dickinson has been working with construction companies for over a decade to help solve complex payroll and human resource (HR) needs. His company, Integrated Design, was acquired by ADP in 2021. In celebration of Construction Safety Week, BUILDER caught up Dickinson to learn more about how engagement boosts safety.
What is the connection between employee engagement and safety?
The team at ADP Research defines engagement as the emotional state of mind that causes people to do their best work and do it sustainably. The construction site requires total attentiveness, total awareness, total engagement. Taking your eye off the ball while working on the jobsite can have severe physical consequences. As much as possible, construction workers need to be in their best state of mind to ensure their safety and that of their colleagues. In addition to engagement’s tie to physical safety, there’s also the mental health aspect of this, as engagement is an emotional state of mind. Whether on the jobsite or in their everyday lives outside of work, construction organizations should strive to support their workers in as many ways as possible so that they are in a healthy, thriving, and safe state of mind.
How does leadership affect engagement?
According to ADP Research’s People at Work 2025 report on engagement, which involved responses from nearly 38,000 working adults, 20% of workers in the construction and related trades industry reported full engagement. Construction was actually one of the most fully engaged industries but there’s certainly a lot of room to improve. When you consider why some workers might not be fully engaged, there’s a few possible trends when you look at the broad results of ADP Research’s analysis of worker engagement. For example, when a team leader is not fully engaged, less than 1% of team members are not fully engaged. However, when a team leader is fully engaged, 65% of team members are fully engaged. Additionally, 55% of workers who feel they are on the best team report full engagement compared to just 10% of workers who are not on the best team but still report full engagement.
How can construction companies prioritize engagement and mental health?
While it doesn’t just apply to construction workers in the survey, construction organizations can consider the aforementioned data regarding the importance of leadership and teams on engagement. How is your current company structured? Are your teams cohesive, functioning for maximum productivity, and simply getting along both on and off the jobsite? Are there any ways you can adjust your teams in an effort to boost engagement? Another way to prioritize engagement and mental health is more communication. Check in more with your employees. Are they happy at work, are they feeling burnt out? Is there anything they love to do on the jobsite or in the back office. If so, is there a way to give them more of this work and less of the work they don’t like as much? Finally, invest in your employees. Invest in their future by investing in their growth right now. Workers covet skills development opportunities and data has shown them to be more productive, more likely to be retained, and more likely to be a promoter of your organization when they feel you are investing in their skills development.
What are some strategies for boosting engagement?
Wrapping in all of the aforementioned ways construction companies can prioritize engagement and mental health, you need to have the right HR software solution. How is your organization leveraging HR technology to track employee engagement and productivity, identify skills gaps, and career development opportunities, and provide access to 24/7 learning content, whether your construction workers want to develop new skills or learn best on-site safety practices? In today’s world, especially with more Gen Z and millennial employees in the workforce, you need to use technology to manage and help your workers efficiently and effectively. This is even more true right here and now as class of 2025 graduates are entering the workforce. In today’s world of work, things move quickly and the competition to recruit and retain talent is hot. Using technology to help give your construction organization an advantage on talent is a great place to start, especially as you think through recruiting new mobile-first graduates into the construction industry.
Are there ways for companies to measure employee engagement? Could it translate to safety records?
One possible way to do this is by using HR technology that can provide your construction employees with a regular check-in survey to better understand if they are engaged, what they love to do at work, and if they feel they are bringing value to the business. By taking this type of pulse once a week or bi-weekly, construction leaders can identify what drives their workers and craft a talent strategy that creates more of that.
