A safety climate framework for improving health and safety in the Indonesian construction industry

The Indonesian construction industry is the second largest in Asia and accounts for over 30% of all occupational injuries in the country. Despite the size of the industry, there is a lack of safety research in this context. This research, therefore, aims to assess safety climate and develop a framework to improve safety in the Indonesian construction industry. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 311 construction workers. The results show a moderately healthy safety climate but reflect numerous problems, particularly around perceived conflicts between production and safety logics, cost trade-offs being made against other competing project priorities, poor safety communication, poor working conditions, acceptance of poor safety as the norm, poor reporting and monitoring practices, poor training and a risky and unsupportive working environment which prevents workers from operating safely. Two new safety climate paradoxes are also revealed: contradictions between management communications and management practices; contradictions between worker concern for safety and their low sense of personal accountability and empowerment for acting to reduce these risks. A low locus of control over safety is also identified as a significant problem which is related to prevailing Indonesian cultural norms and poor safety policy implementation and potential conflicts between formal and informal safety norms, practices and procedures. Drawing on these findings, a new integrated framework of safety climate is presented to improve safety performance in the Indonesian construction industry.